With even beef chuck prices as high as they are ($8.99/lb where I am), Does anyone see an issue with pork being the majority of one’s diet? I’ve been able to get pork butt for between $1.50 and $2.25 /lb, so the savings is very significant. Plus, they’re sooper-dooper fatty!
What say ye?
I think it’s going to be an individual thing. Some people will be OK with a pork heavy diet while others may not do so well with it. I know of people who don’t feel well when they eat pork, one of which (a neighbor) says his arthritis will be very bad if he eats pork.
We have some but I wouldn’t want it to be all of what we eat. Though not dramatic, I don’t feel as well in general when we go heavy on the pork. I definitely understand the prices, though. We buy whole animals and have butchered at a local shop. Pork is definitely cheaper, significantly. Ya do the best ya can.
I know pork doesn’t work well for everyone (some feel bad after pork, some are fine but it doesn’t satiate them well). It works for me 
I simply have no choice at all, I must eat pork, on or off carnivore. Chicken is even cheaper but it doesn’t satiate me and it’s pretty much tasteless - or as expensive as beef (not like I tried that. I only had cheap supermarket chicken and super tasty home-raised chicken). I need my red meat as my meat. So it’s pork, every day My body doesn’t care, apparently.
I don’t eat mostly pork though, not even on pure carnivore. I eat plenty of eggs and especially dairy.
I need to focus on lean meat and pork provides 
One can buy pork at any fattiness level possible. It starts at trimmed pork loin (it’s an abomination and expensive too, only know one supermarket chain that sells it) with about zero and ends with pure fat tissue. And there is everything in-between.
IDK how it is elsewhere but there are lean and fat options among the cheapest cuts. So it’s quite convenient. And I can buy pork anywhere while I need to travel to the city for ruminant meat, another convenient thing.
What kind of cuts you like? My fav is pork chuck (quite fatty but not extremely fatty) but I usually eat the cheapest and still nice options with benefits over chuck, pork loin and green ham, sometimes pork shoulders (I get lard from it). I barely eat other pork cuts but if I manage to find… I think side bacon is the English term for it… I buy that as it’s very very tasty. The fattiness is very varied even for the same cuts, another benefit of eating lean pork, my tracking won’t be super unreliable. I saw super fatty pork loin and lean pork shoulder. Oh sometimes I eat ribs, that’s impossible to track too, sometimes it’s normal fatty pork, mostly meat, sometimes it’s mostly fat. Once I trimmed half of it and still got some insanely fatty meat.
I can get carried away this topic I fear. Pork is the base of my diet and one of the tastiest things ever if you ask me. Never ate anything tastier than good pork (I ate some homemade pork products in my life, some of them were really, really great). It’s not always so great though but it’s still good, nutritious food.
I ate about a pound of pork a day in my meat heaviest times. So that worked for me short term. And about half a pound almost every day works very long term too, apparently.
And never counted but my meat consumption is probably 90-95% pork. The rest is mostly chicken (paired with pork), sometimes fish or turkey.
This is me, as well. I used to just feel meh when I ate it.
How’s your ground beef prices? When I’ve run numbers before, ground beef patty pucks from stores like Aldi/ Walmart seem to consistently lowest for beef. Also bulk packed chicken leg quarters. Maybe mix some of those in with your pork?
You won’t know unless you test. Try a week on just beef, then a few days just pork, and see how you feel. I found very low ketones and energy on pork, even with super high fat percentage.
If you have to focus on beef…Walmart’s 73/27 ground beef in a 10 lb roll is the cheapest I’ve found, if you can tolerate rendered fat, but almost as cheap is a whole untrimmed beef brisket (under $5/lb here). Here’s what to do with it. First, sharpen your knives Then trim the fat and cut into little strips for nice crackling texture. The flat gets cut into bacon shaped strips, across the grain. The rest gets cut into “steak bites” about 1-2 inch square. Everything is lovely air fried at 400 for 8-9 minutes. Sometimes I pressure cook the steak bites into stew for a texture change. I eat a 1/3 lb burger patty for breakfast, another texture change.
We buy pretty much all of our beef as either a half or whole cow, one price for the cow paid to the owner of the cow, and then another price to the butcher who processes, packages and freezes it. All in, I think we were just north of $6/lb for actual meat in the freezer last time. (We’re about to get another one in the next few weeks.) It’s not priced per individual cut, that’s what it works out to total. Basically we have $6/lb ground beef (expensive) and $6/lb fillet mignon/ribeye/NYstrip, etc (cheap). I think it works out well. It hurts up front but it’s amazing beef. (A neighbor only a couple miles up the road from us does an amazing job of raising them, from birth till butcher, and she’s fussy about everything.)
Yes, good reminder.
I grew up on a farm, and that’s the way I get beef. I also taught meat cutting for 10ish years.
My foray into frozen ground beef started when one of my kiddos college friends found relief from bipolar eating carnivore. I was concerned with if it was scalable for people with less access to freezers, etc. The frozen beef patties, chicken quarters, chicken giblets, canned sardines is where I landed. The frozen beef is lower histamine and sometimes even a little less than the 10# tubes
My only issue is asking myself WHY is pork so comparatively cheap. Are pigs treated or fed even worse than cows, is there something about their needs that’s just intrinsically just less expensive, does it have to do with the multiple piglets in a litter v. single calf, or is it the beef price that’s overinflated. I try to eat things that seem both healthy and ethical, and I’ve always had a gray area with pork. As far as health, it seems to agree with me just fine.
Pork are market ready much more quickly and don’t need to be on pasture. Most beef does spend some time outside, even under less-than-ideal circumstances.
Agreed - pigs and chickens are a lot more efficient. The amount of meat produced per unit area of land for them is far higher than with beef.
That’s a great price. The place I get it from is $7.65/pound hanging weight, and you lose 30-40% to get the final weight. So, around $10-11/pound.
I am fortunate, probably more so than I realize. It may be that prices will have gone up a little this time, not sure. But I really like being beef heavy if I can be. We’ve been pork heavy lately because of low supply on beef. Only a few pounds of hamburger left plus a few odd cuts and that’s all of the last cow. We’re on the list for one this month but it hasn’t gone to slaughter yet.
I feel better with beef. I have more energy. Matter of fact, I have to be a bit careful about eating a lot of beef for a late supper because it gives me a lot of energy and I’ll have trouble getting to sleep. If I have a gig to play (jazz piano player), I tend to want something like a hamburger or two with a couple of eggs, pretty much a very clean carnivore meal before playing. It’s the most mentally sharp I can get that I’ve found so far. I figured out a while back that a carby meal before a performance is awful, I’m always fighting to stay alert. The gigs where they want to feed us are the hardest. Nope, don’t want punch or soda or alcohol, just water, maybe a slice of lemon.
I don’t generally have a bad reaction to pork but don’t really get that kind of energy boost from it that I would from beef. Also, the pork fat doesn’t set as well with me (slight nausea if I overdo it). I like poultry but have expensive taste, which is usually farther out of reach than I wanna go. Kinda the same with fish, usually wild caught quality stuff being quite expensive. A bit like the pork, cheap factory poultry or fish just doesn’t set well. My pet theory is that what those animals eat make a bigger difference in them than it does in ruminant animals, I could be just dreamin’. LOL!
I know I can get cheaper hamburger at the local grocery store, maybe $3/lb or even just under if I watch for a sale. But it never comes close to the quality I get from the neighbor’s beef. I would if I had to, it’s still better than goin’ back to carbs.
Personally, I avoid most pork. I do eat uncured bacon some. However, virtually all pork is grain raised. The four stomachs of cows allow them to resaturate most of the polyunsaturated fats they are eating in their grain fed diets, which is why their polyunsaturated fat levels are fairly low despite eating grain finished diets - perhaps no higher than 7%. Grain fed pork is perhaps the very highest in polyunsaturated omega 6 fats - up to 30% of the fat. Pork, especially the organ meats, is one of the very highest in NEU5GC too - right behind goat.
As a consequence for optimal health I have eliminated most all red meat unless it is grass fed, and sought out lower NEU5GC meats. It turns out that most lamb imported from overseas is grass fed, lamb is a lower NEU5GC meat, and for some reason is cheaper than steaks at Costco and Sam’s Club. So, guess who has been buying that? The only rabbit I can find in stores is not cheap, but it has no NEU5GC, and is also low omega 6… It just so happens, the Accioroli’s of Italy eat rabbits they raise, and wild anchovies… and are a high centennarian community.
I eat a lot of pork, close to daily, and seem to do well. I am a firm believer that as long as you are eating carni, your taste buds tell you what you need to know. If it tastes good, that’s what your body wants. That doesn’t work if you are disrupting your hormones with carbs, but on carni, I think it does;