4 diseases caused by eating pork

Among the foods that most people love to eat, pork is at the top of the list. This is demonstrated by the fact that 65% of Americans propose that bacon be named as the country’s national food.

Unfortunately, such popularity comes at a cost. In addition to being the most widely consumed meat in the world, pork may also be one of the most dangerous foods, carrying some important and little-known risks that any consumer should be aware of.

The following article presents the diseases that can develop from eating pork, being very frequent in conditions of consumption of raw meat or poor hygiene, therefore the consideration of these factors is recommended to reduce the existing risks.

What disease causes eating pork?

There are different factors that influence the appearance of diseases as a consequence of eating pork, and just as there are causes, there are also different methods to prevent them. Although the risk is latent in all parts of the world, the probabilities can be reduced through the application of security measures and the reduction of excessive consumption.

Note: It is important, above all, to avoid consuming raw meat of this nature and to be alert and attentive to the appearance of symptoms that include headache and abdominal pain for several days. Pork meat can carry parasites, microorganisms, bacteria and even larvae in its tissues, so it is important that we are responsible and aware of what we consume.

Below we mention 4 of the main diseases that can appear in our body as a consequence of the consumption of animal meat, mainly oriented to pork.

1. Hepatitis E

Because the custom of consuming all parts of the pig from nose to tail has resumed, the consumption of the entrails has gained greater acceptance among enthusiasts of healthy practices, especially the liver, which is recognized for its content of vitamin A and a massive mineral content. But when it comes to pork, liver can be a risky choice.

To highlight: In developed countries, pig liver is the main transmitter of hepatitis E, a virus that infects 20 million people each year and can cause acute illness (fever, fatigue, jaundice, vomiting, pain in the joints and stomach pain) and sometimes liver failure and death. (1)

Most cases of hepatitis E present silently and without symptoms, but pregnant women can experience violent reactions to the virus, including fulminant hepatitis (rapid-onset liver failure) and a high risk of both maternal and fetal mortality. In fact, mothers who become infected during their third trimester face a mortality rate of up to 25%.

In very rare cases, hepatitis E infection can lead to myocarditis (an inflammatory heart disease), acute pancreatitis (painful inflammation of the pancreas), neurological problems (including Guillain-Barré syndrome and neuralgic amyotrophy), blood disorders, and musculoskeletal problems, such as elevated creatine phosphokinase levels, leading to muscle damage and multi-joint pain (in the form of polyarthralgia). (two)

People with compromised immune systems, including organ transplant recipients on immunosuppressive therapy and people with HIV, are more prone to these serious complications of hepatitis E.

To highlight: In the United States, about 1 in 10 store-bought pig livers tests positive for hepatitis E contamination, which is slightly higher than the rate of 1 in 15 in the Netherlands and 1 for every 20 in the Czech Republic. A study in Germany found that around 1 in 5 pork sausages were contaminated.

Figatellu, a traditional French dish consisting of pork liver sausage often eaten raw, is a confirmed carrier of hepatitis E. In fact, in regions of France where raw or undercooked pork is a common delicacy, more than half of the local population show evidence of hepatitis E infection.

In Japan, there has also been an increase in the incidence of hepatitis E from pig farming. In the UK, hepatitis E is transmitted by pork sausages, in pig liver and in pig slaughterhouses, indicating the potential for widespread exposure among pork consumers.

It may be tempting to attribute endemic hepatitis E contamination to commercial farming practices, but in the case of pork, being free-range doesn’t mean it’s healthier. Wild boar eaten from game often also carry hepatitis E, so they are also capable of transmitting the virus to humans who eat game.

Short of completely abstaining from pork, the best way to reduce your risk of contracting hepatitis E is in the kitchen. This virus is very strong and can survive the temperatures of undercooked meat, so high temperature heat is the best weapon against infection.

Note: To inactivate the virus, you must cook pork products for at least 20 minutes at an internal temperature of 160ºF (71ºC) – this appears to be the most effective way. However, the fat can protect the hepatitis virus from being destroyed by heat, so thicker cuts of pork may need extra cooking time or higher temperatures. (3)

2. Multiple sclerosis

One of the most surprising risks associated with pork (and one that has received little public attention) is multiple sclerosis (MS), a devastating autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.

Note: The strong link between pork and multiple sclerosis has been known at least since the 1980s, when researchers looked at the relationship between per capita pork consumption and MS across dozens of countries. (4)

While anti-pork nations such as Israel and India had very minimal risks of the degenerative effects of MS , more liberal consumers such as West Germany and Denmark had very high rates of MS. .

As with all epidemiological findings, the correlation between pork consumption and MS cannot prove that one causes the other (or even that, in MS-affected countries, the most enthusiastic pork eaters were sicker). But by the results, the body of evidence goes much deeper.

Previously, a study of the inhabitants of Scotland’s Orkney and Shetland Islands, a region teeming with unusual delicacies including seabird eggs, raw milk and undercooked meat, found only one dietary association with MS: boiled pig brain. .

Among Shetlanders, a significantly higher proportion of MS patients had consumed brain sausage in their youth, compared with health, age and sex matched controls.

The potential of pig brain to activate neural autoimmunity is not just a conclusion from observational studies. Between 2007 and 2009, a group of 24 pig plant workers mysteriously became ill with progressive inflammatory neuropathy, which is characterized by MS-like symptoms such as fatigue, numbness, tingling and pain.

The source of this pandemic was due to the so-called “ pig brain fog ”, which is the tiny particles of brain tissue released into the air during carcass processing. When the workers inhaled these tissue particles, their immune systems, per standard protocol, formed antibodies against the foreign porcine antigens.

But those antigens bore an uncanny resemblance to certain neural proteins in humans. And the result was a biological calamity: confused as to whom to fight, the workers’ immune systems launched a chronic attack on their own nervous tissue.

Although the resulting autoimmunity was not identical to multiple sclerosis, the same process of molecular mimicry, in which foreign antigens and self antigens are similar enough to trigger an autoimmune response, has been implicated in the pathogenesis of MS.

Of note: Although the role of pigs as carriers of Acinetobacter has not been extensively studied, the bacterium has been found in pig feces, on pig farms, and in bacon, pork salami, and ham, where it serves as a spoilage organism. If the pig acts as a vehicle for Acinetobacter transmission (or somehow increases the risk of human infection), a link to MS would make sense.

Pigs may also be silent and little-studied carriers of prions, the misfolded proteins that lead to neurodegenerative disorders like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human version of mad cow) and Kuru (found among cannibalistic societies). (5)

Some researchers suggest that MS itself could be a prion disease, which attacks oligodendrocytes, the cells that produce myelin. And since prions – and their associated diseases – are transmitted by eating infected nerve tissue, it is possible that prion-containing pork products could be a link in the MS chain.

3. Liver cancer and cirrhosis

Liver problems tend to be related to some predictable risk factors, such as hepatitis B and C infection, exposure to aflatoxin (a mold carcinogen), and excessive alcohol consumption. But, although it is not often considered in the scientific literature, another potential incidence on liver health is the consumption of pork.

In statistical models incorporating known hazards to the liver (alcohol consumption, hepatitis B infection, and hepatitis C infection), pork was independently associated with liver disease. In contrast, beef remained liver neutral or even showed protective effects in these studies.

Note: Liver cancer also tends to continue among the incidence factors marked by pork consumption. A 1985 analysis showed that pork consumption correlated with hepatocellular carcinoma deaths just as strongly as alcohol.

Although swine-borne hepatitis E can lead to liver cirrhosis, this occurs almost exclusively in immunosuppressed people, a subset of the population that is too small to explain the overall correlation.

Relative to other meats, pork tends to be high in omega-6 fatty acids, including linoleic acid and arachidonic acid, which may play a role in liver disease. (6) But vegetable oils, whose polyunsaturated fatty acid content knocks pork out of the risk group, don’t have as close a pork-like relationship to liver disease, making us question whether fat is really to blame.

Heterocyclic amines, a class of carcinogens formed by cooking meat (including pork) at high temperatures, contribute to liver cancer in a variety of animals. But these compounds are also easily formed in beef, according to the same studies that indicated that pork was not positively associated with liver disease.

With all that in mind, it would be easy to dismiss the link of liver disease caused by pork consumption as an epidemiological fluke. However, there are some plausible mechanisms.

The most likely contender involves nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic compounds created when nitrites and nitrates react with certain amines (from protein), particularly at very high temperatures. These compounds have been linked to damage to a variety of organs and cancer, including the liver.

Significant levels of nitrosamines have been found in pork liverwurst, bacon, sausage, ham, and other cured meats. The fatty portion of pork products, in particular, tends to accumulate much higher levels of nitrosamines than the lean cuts, making bacon a particularly abundant source of nitrosamines. (7)

Note: Vegetables are also rich in naturally occurring nitrates, but their antioxidant content and lack of protein help thwart the N-nitrosation process, preventing them from becoming carcinogens.

The presence of fat can also turn vitamin C into a nitrosamine promoter rather than a nitrosamine inhibitor, so combining pork with vegetables might not confer much protection.

A 2010 analysis of the NIH-AARP cohort found that in red meat (including pork), processed meat (including processed pork), nitrates and nitrites were positively associated with chronic liver disease. Rubber workers, occupationally exposed to nitrosamines, have faced extremely high rates of non-alcohol related liver disease and cancer.

Noteworthy: Although the evidence is currently too inconsistent to make the claim and connection of nitrosamines and cancer or cirrhosis, the risk is plausible enough to justify limiting consumption of pork products, including bacon, ham , hot dogs, and sausages made with sodium nitrite or potassium nitrate.

4. Yersinosis

For years, the cautionary motto for pork was ” Well done or bust ,” a consequence of fears over trichinosis, a type of roundworm infection that plagued pork eaters for much of the twentieth century. Thanks to changes in feeding practices, farm hygiene and quality control, swine trichinosis has gone off the radar, bringing pink pork meat back on the menu.

But, the pig’s relaxed heat rules may have opened the doors for another type of infection – yersiniosis, which is caused by the Yersinia bacterium . In the US alone, it causes 35 deaths and nearly 117,000 cases of food poisoning each year. Its main route of entry for humans? The undercooked pork. (8)

The acute symptoms of Yersiniosis are quite apparent: fever, pain, bloody diarrhea. But its long-term consequences are what should really set off all the alarm bells. Victims of yersinia poisoning face a 47-fold increased risk of reactive arthritis, a type of inflammatory joint disease caused by the infection.

Some evidence suggests that yersinia can lead to neurological complications. Infected people with an iron overdose may be at increased risk of multiple liver abscesses, which can lead to death. And among people who are genetically susceptible, anterior uveitis, inflammation of the iris of the eye, is also more likely after a Yersinia attack. (9)

Note: Yersinia infection may also increase the risk of Graves-Basedow disease, an autoimmune disease characterized by excessive production of thyroid hormones.

Most pork products (69% of samples tested, according to a Consumer Reports analysis) are contaminated with yersinia bacteria , and the only way to safeguard against infection is through proper cooking. An internal temperature of at least 145ºF for whole hog and 160ºF for ground hog is necessary to decimate any lingering pathogens.

Important: There are non-profit institutions that encourage financing for medical research, INDACEA is one of them.