Mercola on board with my Pork position…
Most of you know I don’t eat Pork. I choose not to because I simply believe that if God said not to, then it must have been for good reason. I tend to seem legalistic to people when they look at my choices to follow certain areas of God’s Law. I am not legalistic, I don’t believe you have to “earn Grace”. I just want to be honoring. It is tough to follow the basic laws, don’t lie, steal, covet… because our minds wander and are quick to respond. So if I get to choose not to eat Pork, well, I find that much easier to follow.
When I was first deciding to go this route, it was a combination of education that led me to the decision, then I brought my wife along, and now my kids. It was 11 years ago that I started HealthSprout, and shortly after, Rex Russell came to First Baptist Woodstock in support of his book, What The Bible Says About Healthy Living. I got the book, and taught a four week review of the book at what was Jehova Java in downtown Woodstock. It was the first time I saw scientific data backing up the idea not to eat pork, shellfish, etc. And it was very convicting to me.
I immediately felt sick at the though of eating anything from a pig. So I gave it up. But… I waffled. It wasn’t long that I began to have desires for ham, or bacon. So about a year and a half later, I decided ham for Easter was ok. It was easy to fall back in at this point, because I did not have a strong commitment to the WHY I should not eat it, it really just felt like I shouldn’t. Then I re-committed after digging in a bit more, this was the first time we taught Body By God, and I knew without a doubt that Leviticus 11:7 was written as TIMELESS TRUTH, not some random law for the nation of Israel.
Quick aside – for most of you who have Christian belief, and for those of you who don’t, you still believe that your life would be better if you did not steal, lie, murder, commit adultery, covet others things, etc. In other words, there is a universal belief that following God’s law blesses your life… that it is timeless truth.
Leviticus 11:7 – And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you.
Unclean. So Dr. Mercola wrote an article on this, which I think was the first time I saw him directly support a Biblical statement (I mention this because he supports “krill” oil as the best fish oil, I do not because I do not eat unclean animals of the sea either… so i prefer a fish oil of a fish who eats krill). Dr. Mercola touches on a reason that I have never reported on, which is why I enjoyed this article, and wanted to share it now:
Pork consumption has a strong epidemiological association with cirrhosis of the liver — in fact, it may be more strongly associated with cirrhosis than alcohol (although some have questioned the studies that indicate this, and point out that countries with high pork consumption tend to have low obesity rates.)
Too many polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) contribute to chronic inflammation, which causes all sorts of problems over the long-term. Inflammation is at the source of just about every chronic disease we see today.
As I have been pushing and promoting the anti-inflammatory lifestyle, this is just one more contributing factor. Why would pork have such an impact on the liver? Because it is such a dirty animal. The Liver is your detoxification plant. The thing that is working to clean you up. A pig is so dirty, you cannot put it into context really. The animal can eat anything, and the way that it deals with toxins is different than ourselves. They have a large liver, that is able to process much of their toxic load, but they also process more directly to fat stores than most animals.
There are few animals on the planet that can survive the kind of toxicity that a pig can. Studies have shown that they process venom from snakes faster than other animals their size, they can eat infectious diseases without becoming infected, yet they can become “vectors” meaning they can share the disease. Ultimately… unclean.
My recommendation, get off of it, and stay off of it. Be sure to click the link above to Mercola’s article, it is chocked full of useful data.
Thanks for caring, be well! – Dr. E