i have a specific unusual food allergy. I always presumed abraham or ishmael or jacob or moses or one of them mythical folk had a food allergy against pigs and said “you know what, if i started a religion about not eating pigs maybe i wouldn’t get the runs every time i went out to eat”
Comment on halal paintball
Hapankaali@lemmy.world 8 hours agoThe origin of Abrahamic dietary laws is not certain. There is no obvious benefit in terms of hygiene, also not in ancient times (they long predate “medieval” times). Keep in mind that poultry carries a significant risk of salmonella poisoning.
It has been suggested that the origin might have simply been that pigs are viewed as unclean due to their own diet including carrion. Another speculated reason is that rulers might have wanted to promote poultry due to it being a more economical way of raising livestock.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Maybe they just thought pigs are too cute to eat.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
Pigs of all animals?
deHaga@feddit.uk 7 hours ago
I thought it was due to the parasites, worms?, that pork gets in hot arid countries which is why both the Jews and Muslims don’t eat it
Hapankaali@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
No, that’s just an ad-hoc rationalization. Before refrigeration, people didn’t just leave fresh meat lying around. Either it was consumed immediately after cooking it, or it was smoked, cured or dried right away after butchering (people used much more salt than they do nowadays for e.g. modern hams to make sure the meat lasted a long time). The climate doesn’t really matter - in temperate climates fresh meat goes bad rapidly as well.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Just going to point out that cold storage predates modern refrigeration by literal millenia, hell there was a Greek island that mastered it well enough to consistently manufacture ice cream. I think the term I’ve heard is lagen basically a stone basement with evaporation boxes that can be used to keep tempatures around 50°F. The problem was consistency and how much labor it took to actually build the things, also they’d sometimes just kinda break if the environment shifted too much or were only usable during certain seasons.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It reminds me of Northern Europeans stereotyping Southern Europeans as lazy. But Northern European don’t realise it is mainly because Southern Europe is very hot to work for longer hours. The Southern European “siesta” of course carried over to Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Before Cuba gained independence from Spain, they only work three hours a day, and this happened only about one hundred years ago.
Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
Could also just be an exaggerated case of “ew, poor people food”, since pigs will eat damn near anything.
I guess chickens are similar and take up less space though (plus, eggs). And are arguably easier to transport and defend (a rooster can fuck you up)
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 1 hour ago
There was also the result of drawing a sharp line between the in-group and everyone else. If we have strict dietary laws but the people on the other side of the hill don’t share them, then it follows that they’re unspeakable barbarians, and that we should not trade or cooperate with them, let alone intermarry, and indeed, it’s acceptable to kill them and take their stuff, as surely such a barbarous people would do the same to us.