America Has Too Much Pork
wsj.com
wsj.com
$5/lb where? Boneless pork butt, the objectively best cut, is about $2.50/lb here in my major US city through instacart, which notoriously marks up prices. I'm sure that if I went to the store instead of having someone bring it to me it would be even cheaper.
Seems to include things like bacon and deli ham in the average which are obviously much more than $5/lb. Also things like deli-cooked ribs.
But it seems to be a meticulously calculated average of actual retail prices.
When I go to the restaurant supply store, I can get bulk packages for $1-$2 a pound. Granted, these are often big, but not massive.
Prices today: Tenderloins are a really good deal at $2.59/lb for around 2 pounds and can be easily separated and frozen. Pork loin(boneless, minimal trimming needed) is $2.25/lb for a 10 lb roast and can be trivially sliced into excellent chops and packed up for later. If you want to cook up some cochinita pibil, a picnic cushion with bone and skin is $1.69 for a 10lb average pack. Bone in shoulder butts are $2.05 for ~ 19lb package.
It's bit more work and more trimming, but cutting a beef strip loin or boneless ribeye into steaks nets out really well. I'll buy beef loin, trim it for a yield of 75% steaks with 15% in usable beef cubes and the rest in fat and silverskin. I render the fat and cook the nasty bits for the dog. If I only count the steak as yield, my $8/lb loin gets me NY strip steak at ~$11/lb and a bunch of free stuff. You just have to be willing and able to drop $140 on beef, cut it, pack it, and store it. It's less than two hours of work to make all the steaks and render the fat.
Inflation sucks but groceries have gotten disproportionately expensive, especially meat. The good deals are out there but it requires a lot more legwork and shopping around than before. People who go to the store and just load up the grocery basket without looking at prices, I don't know how they are even affording to live these days.
I used to buy the bone-in pork shoulder to cut up and use in pressure cooker soups but even those have doubled in price since 2021. I've had to cut back and use more beans and legumes and more bouillon and less meat since then.
My understanding was that loin (pork chops and tenderloin) price a bit higher than butt, and shoulder somewhere in between the other two, or maybe just ahead of chops.
Where I'm from, chops, bacon and sausage accounted for more than 90% of your pork intake, and I'm including pork products flavoring other dishes like soup and beans.
If you tend to think about it going up the leg and over the back, then sure. Picnic shoulder is under the shoulder, butt is over the shoulder, and loin is the back.
From fat soluble nutrients to poor hormone production. Combined with industrial food it's definitely taken a toll on society.
edit: s/decade/century/
On the bright side, it seems like fewer and fewer people take it seriously.
the question is how much extra fat average consumer gets from meat.
Fat can be used for energy, but is also a primary nutrient source. Carbs are solely for energy and the proteins and fats derived from vegetarian sources are of poor quality and low absorption.
Most excess energy that gets stored as fat comes from carbohydrate sources, which are much easier for the body to break down.
I think popular cuts (pork butt, chicken thighs) have worse proportion than that.
Pork butt is about 20g protein and 16g fat, which isn't in and of itself bad, as it can still be used for energy (like carbs can).
If you look at a lot of western nutrition issues, most are centered around lack of fat soluble nutrients and hormone deficiencies, which are sourced significantly from fatty acids.
Edit: there's also obesity, but fat is far more satiating than carbs and tend not to cause the insulin/carb cycling in terms of hunger response that you get from sugars and simpler carbs. In the end, one should not be specifically avoiding fats from animals in natural proportions. That isn't to say you cannot overeat meat, only that it's less likely than overeating from other sources.
skinless is obviously not popular cut.
> tend not to cause the insulin/carb cycling in terms of hunger response
they contribute to extra calories.
Unless you're suggesting that getting an extra ounce of natural animal fat is worse than eating something like a cereal bar with lots of refined chemical additives that aren't real food, including refined fats that don't even exist and would never be taken in in nature?
Fat is 2.5 more dense in calories, and switching to lean meat can cut calories intake significantly.
or likely will not
> That also doesn't consider the fact that the effects of excess sugars/carbs is worse than excess calories from fat.
this is offtopic, I never stated that excess cabrs/sugars better than fat
yes, my observations are very opposite: fats are popular filling in western diet, you can check contents of muffins, croissant, sausages, not even talking about deep fried food, you will see more than half caloric intake is from fat.
But even if you don't eat processed fat, with sedentary office life one may still overconsume calories even from eating fatty meat.
I'd like you to show me someone who is obese because they ate too much fatty meat and had nearly zero sugar/carbs. Because I can show you about 120 million in the US alone where the opposite is true.
that's my personal experience, I already cut sugar/raw carbs, but still need to watch on fatty meat to maintain neutral caloric intake.
She's not a fan of fatty recipes either, while my daughter is basically a bacontarian ... avoiding most other meats.
I smoke almost all pork I make though and that depends on the melted fat to keep it moist. My kids eat it and they would not just eat a chunk of fat like I would.
In my experience, there is no such thing as lean pork that tastes good. Pork meat is rather gamy, so its only redeeming quality is that the fat makes it delicious. Domesticated pigs were essentially bred for a higher fat content, to make them taste better.
One of our family staples is carnitas. Basically you just grab a cheap hunk of pork shoulder butt (often just labled "pork butt" in the store), cut it up into 2" cubes, and throw it into a slow cooker or cast iron pot. For seasonings, toss in any or all of: LOTS of chili powder (hot or not), a little bit of cumin, salt, pepper, onion powder, maybe a bit of lime juice. Cook covered over medium heat for about 4 hours, stirring at least every 45 minutes. It's done when you can easily shred it with a fork. It's okay to remove some fat from the pot before shredding if there is really too much but if you try to drain it all, you are going to be left with a pile of bland meat. Shred it, serve on tacos, nachos, in a salad, or whatever.
The great thing about this recipe is that it's simple and easy. You can get creative with the seasonings, the only two important ones are the chili and salt. If the shredded pork tastes bland or so-so, you need more of one or the other, and it's generally more than you think.
Cast iron skillet on high heat, start with a high smoke point oil, 1 inch thick salt and pepper'd heritage chop, 10 minutes total (3-3-2-2) add butter (and optionally sage, and whole garlic clove - just watch they don't burn†) after the first 6 minutes and baste continuously to finish.
Melts like butter.
† if I see them starting to burn, I place them on top of the chop and pour the fat from the pan over it. Seems to stop the cook while continuing to impart the flavor.
Get a nice lean cut of pork and reverse sear it. You will be shocked how juicy and tender it is.
https://www.seriouseats.com/rack-of-pork-loin-roast-recipe
https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-pan-seared-pork-chop-rec...
* Brine your meat before cooking to help it retain moisture
* Cook the minimum amount possible
* Try low and slow methods like
* Sous vide
* reverse searing
* Cut into chops and pound until thin, bread and fry to make scallopini, schnitzel or katsu
* cut into thin strips and use the Chinese "velveting" method to prepare for use in various stir-fry type dishes
I try and split the difference by keeping the fat and cooking the chops in it. It works OK.
You can, but be careful. While they don't have trichinosis anymore, they're still prone to all sorts of diseases that can be passed to humans. For instance a lot of industrial pork is contaminated with Hepatitis E and salmonella. [1, 2, 3]
You should only consider eating undercooked pork if you really trust the supply chain. I'm not about to chow down on a rare-cooked Walmart chop is all I'm saying, but from a proper butcher is likely ok.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214317/
[2] https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2019/10/undercooked-pork-a-fa...
[3] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/news-events/publications/pork-salm...
Wow. I followed the link assuming you were grossly exaggerating, but it really is rampant.
I also have a pork butt in a pressure cooker I make from time to time for taco.
Ribs--though I really prefer beef ribs which seem to be harder to find for BBQ.
All said, it's not that bad at all. The bun/roll is far worse, but that is true for most modern breads.
Do these "breads" qualify as bread in the EU? Subway's bread had issues, so I'd assume any US based fast food company would fall the same way.
I'm reminded by whiffs of neighborhood summer barbecues that vegetarian food alternatives still haven't solved every problem, and the clinging to meat isn't just (no pun) pigheadedness.
Fruits and vegetables are tasty already, especially when farmed organically in healthy lands. There's zero need to try process it into meat substitutes, and if you require that level of processing you're going to have to accept the negative health outcomes.
> Pork producers expanded farms and processing plants in recent years as overseas demand boomed. Hog herds in China, the world’s top pork consumer, were devastated by an African swine fever outbreak in 2018.
> In 2022, U.S. pork export volumes fell 10% from the year before as China began rebuilding its hog population... With less U.S. pork shipped overseas, more remains at home, where demand has stagnated.
> Wholesale pork values fell below $1.50 a pound in April, according to federal data. Pork officials say the retail value of pork, which has remained around $5 a pound since the start of 2022, has been too high to attract more customers. Officials say they expect retail prices to start ticking down in the coming weeks, and that more consumers may turn to pork as beef prices rise.
Example:
* I buy inventory for $5, sell it for $10.
* I buy more inventory, but it's gone up to $9. I'm selling for $13, but still have some $10 on hand.
* Wholesale plummets to $2.
Until I've sold my on-hand inventory, bought more at $2 and sold that, I'm not making any margin, regardless of how low wholesale drops.
I imagine the shelf-life for some stuff is short, but maybe longer for others.
Ie Tesco in Europe had record income for past year or two, as did most other mega chains. It a mystery why...
The only advantage the membership clubs seem to have is that they are usually going to have what you need if you need if you need to buy like $500 worth of meat for a party or something.
Costco near me is pretty much the same price per unit category as grocery stores unless I go to their special wholesale outlets. Costco has better quality and variety that the standard grocery options though.