I just want to clear something up, right here and right now.
Contrary to what the National Pork Board has been saying since 1987, pork is not a white meat.
It is red meat.
End of story.
Well, okay, it isn’t the end of the story, although it should be.
However, even if pork cooks up to be pale, nutritionally speaking, isn’t a white meat–it is a red meat. Its fat content, protein content, and calorie content is much more akin to beef than to chicken. In addition, when scientists study the effects of red meat on human digestion and the development of colon cancer, pork is one of the meats included in the test protocol.
How is a meat classified as being red or white? It is determined by the amount of myoglobin–a protein-based oxygen-carrying pigment–present in the muscle tissue. Beef, lamb, goat, pork and veal are all considered, by virtue of their myoglobin, content, to be red meats, even though both veal and pork are considerably paler in color both when raw and cooked than beef, lamb and goat.
By some classifications, all mammal meats are considered red meat, although by some gastronimic definitions, rabbit, pork and veal are all considered, along with chicken, turkey and fish as white meats.
(Are you confused yet? Probably–which is why the National Pork Board’s ad campaign worked so darned well.)
How did “The Other White Meat” campaign come about in the first place?
According to The Other White Meat website, in 1987 consumer demand for pork was declining while chicken was precipitously rising in popularity. This was due, in large part, to current nutritional findings about dietary fat and human disease.
After researching the decline of red meat consumption and the rise in white meat consumption, folks at the National Pork Board found that white meat was perceived as being lower in overall fat, saturated fat and calories than red meat, and so was seen as more desirable to the American consumer. So, despite the fact that pork, a red meat, is higher in fat, saturated fat and calories than chicken, a white meat, the pork folks decided to just change the American consumers’ perceptions about it, and just call it, “The Other White Meat.”
In addition, pig breeders developed pigs that carried less body fat in their muscle tissues, which did lower the fat content and calories of pork significantly in the past few decades, which has led to much pork sold in grocery stores in the US being injected with saline so that it will not dry out when cooked. (This is called “value added” marketing, by the way, and not coincidentally, when you add water to a meat product, your customer ends up paying partly for water, not meat. “Value-added” indeed.)
But, even when comparing today’s leaner pork with chicken, nutritionists who are not in the employ of The National Pork Board, generally do not find it at all comparable to chicken. Yes, pork has fewer calories and less fat than beef, but it still has 1/3 more fat and calories than skinless chicken. That is a fact.
With pork, you don’t just have to watch out for the fat in the meat. The advertising can get you, too. Take “The Other White Meat” ads that are run by the National Pork Producers Council. They’re bunk. Pork may be light in color, but it’s not as lean as chicken or turkey. According to the USDA, a typical cut of trimmed pork is one-third fattier than skinless chicken and twice as fatty as skinless turkey. And the pork would have been even worse had the USDA included spare ribs in its “typical” pork numbers.
Yes, if you read that carefully, you can see that some cuts of even today’s “leaner” pork, are fattier than some cuts of beef, which is usually held up as the fattiest of meats. Another bit from the same article asks and answers, “Which has more saturated fat: trimmed pork tenderloin or trimmed Select grade beef round steak? (Pork) tenderloin.”
You can also infer from the above quotes that the USDA also considers pork red meat, not white meat.
That inference is correct.
In “Safety of Fresh Pork…from Farm to Table”, a USDA fact sheet, consumers are told that the USDA classifies pork as a red meat for these reasons:
Oxygen is delivered to muscles by the red cells in the blood. One of the proteins in meat, myoglobin, holds the oxygen in the muscle. The amount of myoglobin in animal muscles determines the color of meat. Pork is classified a “red” meat because it contains more myoglobin than chicken or fish. When fresh pork is cooked, it becomes lighter in color, but it is still a red meat. Pork is classed as “livestock” along with veal, lamb and beef. All livestock are considered “red meat.”
So, if the USDA classifies pork as a red meat, and it really isn’t nutritionally comparable to chicken, a white meat, then why is The National Pork Board allowed to tell us that it is “The Other White Meat?”
Remember, way up at the top when I noted that even though pork is technically, if you go by the myoglobin content, and the nutritional data, a red meat, gastronomically, it (along with veal, rabbit and chicken) is considered white meat because of their cooked color? That is most likely the legal loophole that the public relations geniuses who came up with the campaign used in order to sell Americans on “The Other White Meat” lie.
Because, if gastrnomical definitions are so confused on the point, and some sources (even if they are not scientific, nutritional or governmental sources) define pork as a white meat, then no one is strictly lying if they call pork a white meat. It isn’t a lie–it is a misdirection. A “white lie,” if you will.
I guess you could call the whole issue The National Pork Board’s “Little White Lie” that brought them a whole big pot of money.
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