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• Jews are forbidden from eating pig but have no prohibitions on raising or selling pork or using non-food pig products. The Hebrew texts call pigs "unclean" but provide no further explanation. A number of reasons have been proposed by educated people but they may be too remote from the subject to get it right. If you aren't squemish, here is the Most Likely Reason.
• Islam expanded on the Jewish prohibition by forbiding any contact whatever with pigs on pain of frying forever in the sauté pans of Hell - no virgins for you, buddy!
• Buddhists of non-vegetarian sects.have no problem with pig. Members of vegetarian sects can eat pig only if it has been offered incidentally and was not prepared for them.
• India: Hindus have no prohibition on eating pig unless their sect forbids all meat as part of a vegetarian discipline. Nontheless, pig is not much eaten in India except in a few areas that have a tradition of hunting wild pigs or which have been under Chinese (Northeast) or European influence (Goa). Most of India simply can't afford pigs because they compete directly with humans for food.
• China and Southeast Asia are very big eaters of pig except in the Muslim areas. In the Mongolian areas and Korea beef predominates but pig is not forbidden.
• Christians, a powerful sub-cult of the Pagans, have no dietary prohibitions and are quite fond of pig wherever it can be raised economically, particularly in Europe and the Americas. A few small Christian sects do take Jewish law more seriously and forbid pig but they are the exceptions.

Pork cuts are much simpler than beef cuts, including only four "primal" cuts.

Pork Butt Roast - Boston Butt
The top portion of the front leg of a pig from the backbone down and including the shoulder blade. It may be sold skin-on but is more commonly without skin and often without bone. If boneless it may be rolled up and secured with netting.

The term "butt" has nothing to do with the rear end of the pig, this is the front shoulder. Some say it was called "Boston Butt" because it was packed in a barrel called a "butt" but I think that's reaching. The section below the Butt Roast is the Pork Shoulder Picnic Roast.

Pork Chop - Pork Loin Chop
The typical "bone in" loin chop shown was 3/4 inch thick and weighed 9 ounces. There are three types of pork chop depending on where they were cut from the pig, but they may be properly titled in the market. They are:

• Loin Chop: as shown in the photo. This chop has a "T" shaped bone separating the loin muscle (bottom in photo) from the tenderloin muscle (top in photo). The loin muscle is large and goes almost to the point.
• Blade End Chop: cut from the sholder end of the pig. This chop is attached to a rib bone and has a much smaller loin muscle surrounded by a layer of fat and a couple of narrow muscles on the outside edge and up at the point.
• Rib Chop: cut from between the other two. It has a rib bone on one side and a fairly large oval shaped loin muscle extending to near the pont. This is the chop to use for stuffed pork chops.

Pork Shoulder Picnic Roast (Fresh)
The portion of the front leg above the hocks and below the Pork Butt Roast (Boston Butt). See also Picnic Ham for the smoked and cured version. This is a large cut which is often roasted intact, skin-on and bone-in, and a very fine roast it is. It's a fairly lean cut with plenty of meat and big bones through the center, and any chef will tell you there's lots of flavor near the bone.

If you can't handle skin and bones see Pork Butt Roast. The skin and bones are critical flavor elements and you aren't going to get anything near the same without them.

It's also a very interesting piece for parting out, particularly if you have recipes requiring skin (the whole underside of the unit in the photo is covered with skin). An 8 pound shoulder will yield 4-1/2 pounds of clear meat without fat, 10 ounces of skin, only 1/3 cup of fat rendered from the cracklings and a good 2 quarts of soup stock, particularly good if you splinter the bones.

Keep in mind this is working muscle so it has more flavor but needs more cooking time to bring it tender than a pork loin or rib roast would.

See our article Ham & Cured Pork for comprehensive instructions on purchasing and cooking hams.

Pork has long been condemned in the U.S., particularly by the American Heart Association, for a high content of "artery clogging saturated fat". Strangely, during the 18th and 19th centuries when this country practically lived on lard and fatty pork, heart disease was not a major problem. This was pointed out by an elderly physician present at the kick-off for the AMA's "Heart Healthy Diet". Nor does it seem to be much a problem in other demographics with high pork consumption.

On the other hand, demographics consuming a lot of trans fats (long promoted by the AHA as a "healthy alternative") and polyunsaturated oils do have a high incidence of both heart disease and cancer. I suspect there are serious flaws in current "medical knowledge", but I'm not a medical doctor so I don't dispense medical advice, nor do I have a vested interest in current "medical knowledge".

In any case, the U.S. pork industry has worked hard to reduce the amount of fat in "the other white meat" they produce, even to the point flavor starts to suffer from lack of it. Fat can be removed almost entirely from many modern cuts of pork.

Trichinosis is a sometimes fatal, sometimes debilitating parasitic worm disease long associated with undercooked pork. It has been pretty much eliminated from American industrial pork, but is still occasionally found in pigs grown on small farms.

Actually trichinosis can be acquired from eating any animal that is not strictly vegetarian. Bear is the second most common source, but walrus, dog, raccoon and other omniverous animals should also be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 165°F/75°C before serving. For more information see Note P2.

• P1 - Pork Information - U.S. Pork.
• P2 - Trichinosis - Center for Disease Control (CDC).