Cows Good, Pigs Bad

[Copernicus]

I grew up hearing things like 'starve a fever and feed a cold'.

The proverb is "Feed a fever, starve a cold", and uses an archaic meaning of "starve" which used to just mean "kill" or "die". It's a contraction of "Feed a fever and you will starve a cold", and originally meant that if a person has a fever, you should ensure that they eat an adequate amount, lest they succumb to a cold.

It's a single piece of advice, not a pair of alternatives.

It's been updated to include chicken soup.

 

[jab]

<snip>

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

Pigs also can ruin scarce springs and other water resources. Which would not make them popular in semi-arid enviroments. The OT declares animals known to scavage as unclean among others. Pigs will scavage dead animals.

I have also heard that undercooked pig meat is more likely than the meat of other domesticated animals to be able to infect a human with a much wider range of infections and parasites. I. e. it is more likely to make you sick, and is therefore more "unclean"

 

[jab]

Ancient people did not have to know why a particular mudroom could make you sick or kill you, only correlate problems by observation.

Naturally sometimes the correction would be wrong and sometimes rigt.

Trichinosis Fact Sheet

Communicable Disease Fact Sheet, trichinosis

www.health.ny.gov

What is trichinosis?

Trichinosis is a food-borne disease caused by a microscopic parasite called Trichinella. People can get this disease by eating raw or undercooked meat from animals infected with the parasite. Often these infected meats come from wild game, such as bear, or pork products.
Who gets trichinosis?

Anyone who eats raw or undercooked meat from infected animals can develop trichinosis. Most cases come from consuming undercooked wild game meat, such as bear, while some other cases come from eating pork products. The parasite is not found in domestic pigs raised in confinement, but can be found in pigs raised outdoors in close contact with wildlife and rodents. Trichinosis infection is relatively rare in the United States.

Yeah, I will bet dollars to donuts that nobody in the ancient world had any idea what caused trichinosis. It was just something that happened to people, probably because they had upset the gods.

Yes, that's why "primitive" people continued to get ill and even die in multitudes by never cluing in that any commonly available plant-based "foods" were sickening. Why so many people were absolutely fearless in the presence of snakes and especially spiders--some of which are actually not harmful. Most "primitive" people don't seem to have realized the dangers of pig meat out; but a few eventually did.

 

[bilby]

Most "primitive" people don't seem to have realized the dangers of pig meat out; but a few eventually did.

Citation needed.

 

[Rhea]

I am convinced that almost all religious food restrictions are simply based on othering and superiority complexes, as someone said earlier in the thread. They simply seek to make themselves look different and in their eyes, better.

 

[Rhea]

I see vegetarianism for some as a general self loathing of being human.

I’m a vegetarian because when I eat meat, my asshole bleeds. Which is quite distressing, really. Alas, I like meat a lot, so about 5-10 days a year I indulge, with predictable consequences.

 

[Bronzeage]

<snip>

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

Pigs also can ruin scarce springs and other water resources. Which would not make them popular in semi-arid enviroments. The OT declares animals known to scavage as unclean among others. Pigs will scavage dead animals.

I have also heard that undercooked pig meat is more likely than the meat of other domesticated animals to be able to infect a human with a much wider range of infections and parasites. I. e. it is more likely to make you sick, and is therefore more "unclean"

The idea that pig parasites goes back to the early days of microbiology. Parasites that were species specific were first discovered in pigs and it was quickly labeled as the reason for pork taboos. Later, similar parasites were found which live in cattle and sheep.

 

[bilby]

Parasites that were species specific were first discovered in pigs and it was quickly labeled as the reason for pork taboos.

Which was a daft bit of presentism right then.

"Hey, we've just discovered something for the first time ever. I bet our brand new discovery is the exact reason people decided to set some rules thousands of years ago!"

Well, no. Not unless they had a time machine, or access to a deity that could tip them off, but for inscrutable reasons didn't specify either the reason behind His apparently arbitrary rules; Nor bother to add other rules that would have made far more difference - such as "don't let your shit get into your drinking water".

Where's the commandment "Thou shalt not dig a cesspit within a hundred cubits of a well, river, or spring"?

The reason for pork taboos was never rational; And in an age in which rationality had just become hugely fashionable, the irrational faiths were scrabbling for a way to appeal to the new generation of people who weren't going to accept "because I said so" as a sufficient reason to do something. So they leapt at the chance to say "Oh, yes, we always did this because of sound scientific reasoning, we just never bothered to mention it before".

It's bollocks. Nobody in ancient Judea was keeping kosher because of parasites that wouldn't be detected for another three or four millennia. They did it because the rabbis said they should do it. And the reason they said that was so that their people would remain separated from (and could feel superior to) the rest.

People don't do things for reasons nobody knows about at the time.

I'm extraordinarily disappointed that this needs to be explicitly spelled out. It should be bleeding bloody obvious.