Does eating pork 'sweep away the dirt'?

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Many South Koreans subscribe to the traditional belief that eating pork helps cleanse the body of pollutants. Korea AgraFood magazine reports that, after doing a particularly dusty piece of work, many South Koreans will eat pork to "sweep away all the dirt in the throat."

The South China Morning Post cites this old belief as the driver behind a 32 per cent increase in pork belly and leg sales in the first week of December, when air pollution in Seoul reached a level three out of six. South Korean media call the smog that drifts east from China an "air raid," and inhabitants are increasingly concerned about its hazardous effects.

Unfortunately, there is no scientific proof that eating pork will actually help. At least it's not as harmful as jamming cigarette butts up your nose, another bogus cure that The New York Times reports is spreading over the Chinese Internet.

Meanwhile, the smog in China is so bad that Bloomberg News reports Chinese pilots at domestic airlines must now be qualified for blind landings before they can fly into the country's 10 most congested airports. BP