I always hear that pork has to be thoroughly cooked to prevent things like trichinosis and other parasitic infections. However there’s a lot of types of cured pork commonly eaten, right? Here in Spain everyone eats ham, lomo, chorizo and other stuff that is cured but essentially not cooked, and the few cases of trichinosis that happen are all from people eating game they hunt themselves. Is pork really dangerous?
In: Biology
Correct, uncooked pork products can harbor pretty nasty food pathogens. But as you alluded too curing meats is a way of getting rid of most of them.
A lot of bacteria get their water via osmosis. This is normally a passive process that doesn’t require energy because water wants to equalize or travel from the higher to lower concentrated areas. Curing meats takes advantage of this, if you salt and cure a meat product you are making that process of osmosis getting water into a pathogenic cell impossible. When a meat is salted and cured you make it more favorable for water to travel outside the cell than inside, thus dehydrating the pathogenic bacteria. This is called [lowering water activity.](https://aqualab.com/en/knowledge-base/market-insights/water-activity-and-shelf-stable-meat-products)
While you aren’t cooking the pork, you are dehydrating all of the pathogens in the pork effectively killing them or making them dormant, or safe to eat. [Nitrates are also used too](https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/whats-the-deal-with-nitrates-and-nitrates-used-in-meat-products/), they lower the pH of the pork and make it way too acidic for the pathogens to survive too and inhibit their growth too.
I eat cured meats with my family a lot too, other than some heartburn I’ve never gotten a food borne illness from them.
Personally, I like my pork medium to medium well. I don’t enjoy medium rare pork, so I don’t eat it. Not really worried about trichinosis.
I want this. NOW. never ever heard of this. You would think as someone with an Eastern European background who has been invaded by Germany a few times, my family would have had this in the repertoire
FDA says pork should be cooked at least medium. That does not mean we’ll done like chicken or turkey.
Cured meat is preserved with potassium salts.
Raw food can have microbes living in it.
Those microbes might be harmful in some cases.
You can kill many of those microbes in various ways. Cooking is one way. Curing is another. In some cases fermentation works too. I think sometimes smoking and drying can work too.
In various ways, this applies to most foods, pork is not special here.
As someone who lives in a country where people eat raw pork on a regular basis I can tell you it can be safe to eat it raw but it has to be really fresh
What disease did cured pork even have?
Can eating smoked pork be harmful to your health?
Don’t quote me on this, but isn’t pork safer to eat a little under done because we no longer feed pigs our garbage? My dad growing up had an underground bin where they’d put their food scraps and a farmer would come pick it up to feed their pigs. My understanding was this is why we had to cook our food thoroughly.
Had an in law and her kid get sick from undercooked pork a while back. It did not sound pleasant. I just assumed pork was virtually inedible raw and had no idea it was consumed in some places. Then again, it was eye opening to hear some people eat raw ground beef. Next thing i know, people gonna be eating raw chicken somewhere. I know some countries can eat raw eggs on their food.
there was a reason we started cooking everything and average lifespans increased exponentially from then on.
Now i’ve had sushi. and as long as you’re getting the food item from a reputable and imho (should be illegal to serve unless licensed) restaurant, then go for it.
Latest Answers