Pork

Pork, the flesh of swine, is a food in very general use in most parts of the world, except among Jewish and Mohammedan communities. Its great advantages are cheapness of production, since the pig is a prolific animal and a general feeder, and the ease with which it can be preserved without losing its good qualities. The chief prejudices against its use seem to have their ground in the fact that the flesh is rather difficult of digestion when it is fresh; that the flesh is greatly affected by unsanitary feeding; and is in any case to be avoided in hot weather, though a hot climate seems to have little deleterious effect on pork-eaters, since it is a favourite food in the South Sea Islands. To know what pork can be, one has only to eat the flesh of pigs fed on acorns, beech-mast, or dairy produce, and allowed free grazing and exercise, or to taste a well-smoked wild boar's ham. Ireland and the United States do an immense trade in pork.