Why is nutritionally rich pork, along with shellfish, forbidden by multiple religions.

Date: December 13, 2025

Prof Frink:

I have long been perplexed why nutritionally rich pork, along with shellfish, are forbidden by multiple religions.

I figured it had something to do with middle eastern weather not killing off parasites like Northern Europe and Asia. But I was wrong! It’s about power over the population.

Ancient Middle East, roughly 1000 BCE. Multiple religions suddenly develop prohibitions against pork. Judaism, Islam, later various Christian sects. The explanation given is hygiene. Pork carries trichinosis. It’s “unclean.”

But here’s the interesting part: Cattle and sheep carry diseases too. Anthrax, brucellosis, various parasites. Yet beef and lamb are deemed clean and acceptable.

The real reason for pork prohibition is economic and political. Pigs are democratic animals. They’re easy to raise. Any peasant family can keep a pig, feed it scraps, and have meat for winter. Pigs don’t require large grazing lands. They convert waste into protein efficiently.

Cattle and sheep, however, require pasture. Land. Lots of it. Land that must be controlled, owned, managed. Land that concentrates in the hands of those wealthy enough to hold it.

In ancient societies, if everyone can raise pigs, everyone has access to meat. Power disperses. But if meat requires cattle grazing on large estates, meat access becomes controllable.

The priests and rulers who established dietary laws weren’t idiots. They understood that pork democratized protein access. A peasant with a pig was independent. A peasant dependent on beef from landlord’s cattle was controlled.

The “unclean” designation wasn’t about parasites. It was about power.
This pattern repeats through history. Medieval European nobility consumed pork freely while peasants were restricted. Victorian England saw pork associated with lower classes while beef signified wealth and status.

Modern industrial agriculture has inverted some of this. Factory-farmed pork became cheap commodity meat. But the cultural associations remain. Beef is prestigious. Pork is common.

The interesting thing is pork is nutritionally excellent. High in fat, rich in B vitamins, contains all essential amino acids. It’s particularly high in thiamine, crucial for metabolism.

But it was shamed, restricted, and prohibited not because it was inferior, but because it was too accessible.

When everyone can access protein, hierarchies flatten. The elites have always understood this. That’s why pork was made “unclean” while beef and lamb were sanctified.

Control the meat supply, control the population. If that meat supply is too easy to produce independently, demonize it.

THE STORY CONTINUES HERE:

https://archaeology.org/issues/march-april-2025/letters-from/on-the-origin-of-the-pork-taboo/