Pork meat, a kind of red meat (in addition to beef, horse meat, mutton or duck meat), is a permanent element of Polish cuisine. Traditional pork chop with potatoes and cucumber salad is served on Sunday tables of most Polish families. What are the benefits of eating pork?
Nutritional values of pork
Unprocessed pork is a great source of important nutrients for our body. First of all, it provides us with well absorbed protein, containing a full set of amino acids - both endogenous and exogenous. In addition, pork is rich in iron, which is a key micronutrient transporting oxygen from the lungs to all tissues of our body. The iron contained in animal products, i.e. heme iron, is much better absorbed by our body than the non-heme iron found in plant products. Vitamin B1 present in pork meat supports the functioning of the nervous and cardiovascular systems, while vitamins B6 and B12 regulate the production of red blood cells.
How often should you eat pork?
Good quality unprocessed pork, derived from organic farming, can be safely included in our diet 1-2 times a week (total portion 350-500 g per week). Its nutritional composition is much better compared to processed products. In addition, it is worth choosing lean pork fragments containing less saturated fat and cholesterol. Also, by preparing pork properly, you can reduce the amount of fat in your meals. A good idea is roasting, cooking or stewing meat with the addition of spices, herbs and organic vegetables. Lean pork can alternatively be replaced with other types of red meat, as well as white meat, for example poultry or veal.
Pork native breeds
More and more people are interested in buying high-quality food, which causes an increase in interest in native pork breeds. Native breeds are breeds of small importance and local scale, which are reared only in one country or geographical area. They are characterized by resistance to disease and stress, good adaptation to the environmental conditions of the area, as well as lower nutritional requirements. Produced on a much smaller scale on organic farms, native breeds are protected by the rules of genetic resources, which in Poland have a long tradition of preserving and increasing the population size, as well as striving to maintain the greatest genetic variation.
The advantage of native breeds meat is their crispness and very good taste. Therefore, it is worth choosing meat from pigs from the “pulawska”, “zlotnicka pstra” and “biala” breeds.
Choose organic pork
An increase in interest in organic pork has been observed since 2000. A characteristic feature of organic meat is its high quality, resulting from differences in animal breeding - species variability, feed diversity and slaughter methods. Organic farming meat has a lower content of saturated fatty acids and higher of unsaturated fatty acids compared to conventional farming meat. High quality organic meat products can be found in good butcheries and healthy food stores, as well as directly on organic farms.
