Is eating cloven-hoofed animals, bottom-feeders or ruminants bad for you?

Question

The Torah and Talmud claim (and I have Christian friends that also claim) that eating animals that

1. are bottom-feeders or ruminants—That is, eat the crud off the sea-floor, like shrimp, or digest their own waste like rabbits, pigs etc.)—OR
2. have a cloven hoof.

(but not both) is bad for your health.

• Is there any evidence to suggest that because these animals consume "unclean" foods they are themselves unclean and therefore not fit for consumption?

• Why would an ruminant animal with a cloven hoof be OK to eat, but a ruminant animal with any other hoof/foot not be OK to eat?

Answer 1

Judiasm 101 has some interesting insights into Jewish dietary laws, although the author states,

However, health is not the only reason for Jewish dietary laws. Many of the laws of kashrut have no known connection with health. To the best of our modern scientific knowledge, there is no reason why camel or rabbit meat (both treif) is any less healthy than cow or goat meat.

I don't know how much I agree with that statement.

The basic tenets:

Certain animals may not be eaten at all. This restriction includes the flesh, organs, eggs and milk of the forbidden animals.

Of the animals that may be eaten, the birds and mammals must be killed in accordance with Jewish law.

All blood must be drained from meat and poultry or broiled out of it before it is eaten. Certain parts of permitted animals may not be eaten.

Fruits and vegetables are permitted, but must be inspected for bugs (which cannot be eaten)

Meat (the flesh of birds and mammals) cannot be eaten with dairy. Fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables and grains can be eaten with either meat or dairy. (According to some views, fish may not be eaten with meat).

Utensils (including pots and pans and other cooking surfaces) that have come into contact with meat may not be used with dairy, and vice versa. Utensils that have come into contact with non-kosher food may not be used with kosher food. This applies only where the contact occurred while the food was hot.

Grape products made by non-Jews may not be eaten.

There are a few other rules that are not universal. We may not eat animals that died of natural causes (Deut. 14:21) or that were killed by other animals. In addition, the animal must have no disease or flaws in the organs at the time of slaughter. These restrictions do not apply to fish; only to the flocks and herds (Num. 11:22).

Back to the camel/rabbit issue; both are carriers of diseases which can affect man. Since the aforementioned diseases would also affect various organs of the animals, they would not be considered edible under Jewish dietary law. Shellfish, clams etc - you can't see the organs of them to know whether or not they're clean - therefore they aren't edible.

My opinion:

As far as not eating something that keeled over dead one day... that should be a no-brainer, as is the case with carrion - rabies Since sanitation and food preparation left MUCH to be desired, foods which were 'risky' were banned, as were any animals known to commonly carry diseases which could affect men.

Answer 2

Bryna Shatenstein and Parviz Ghadirian did a great survey of adacemic research on the influences of diet on the health of different religious/ethnic groups. Here is a summary of their results (hopefully I am not violating any copyright laws by excerpting this!):

• Mormons (Canada): "balanced diet" results in low mortality from "diseases of affluence" (Jarvis, 1977)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (Japan): Low intake of broiled foods and antioxidant vitamins results in low incidence of digestive tract cancer (Phillips and Kuzuma, 1977)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (USA): Prevalence of lacto-ovo vegetarianism leads to low mortality and low incidence of coronary heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (Phillips, et al., 1980)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (Denmark): Prevalence of lacto-ovo vegetarianism and low incidence of tobacco & alcohol use resulted in a low incidence of tobacco- and alcohol-related cancers (Jensen, 1983)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (USA): Low mortality among those who are lacto-ovo, higher mortality among those who are not (Kahn, et al., 1984)
• Zen Buddhist priests (Japan): Traditional Japanese diet resulted in low mortality across the spectrum of all causes (Ogata, et al., 1984)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (Japan): Lacto-ovo vegetarianism and broiled fish consumption resulted in overall reduced mortality (Kuratsune, 1986)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (USA): Low mortality among those who have low meat and egg intake and high milk intake (Snowdon, 1988)
• Old Order Amish (USA): General lifestyle resulted in low hypertension, low stress, and low circulatory disease mortality (Fuchs, et al., 1990)
• Jat Hindus (India): Unclear if any medical/nutritional conclusions were made by this study (Kapil, et al., 1990)
• Jews (Israel): Disparity between the rate of urological cancers between Jews and non-Jews linked to diet, although not necessarily a Kosher diet (Bitterman, et al., 1991)
• Seventh-Day Adventists (USA): Low risk of coronary heart disease among those who eat nuts and whole wheat bread (Fraser, et al., 1992)
• Buddhists (Taiwan): Vegetarian diet resulted in low plasma cholesterol, low glucose, and low uric acid (Pan, et al., 1993)
• Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Canada): Low animal protein intake and the Kosher diet resulted in a high polyunsaturated:saturated ratio of diet fat, which has been shown to be correlated to low incidence of coronary heart disease (Shatenstein, et al., 1993)

To summarize, it seems like the people who avoid eating cloven-hoofed animals, bottom-feeders, and ruminants tend to also have a low intake of animal-based protein overall, which itself is healthy. Whether or not eating those types of animals would make one's diet worse, however, is a much more difficult question to answer.

Answer 3

Shellfish do concentrate heavy metals and toxins so you could argue that they are bad for you. There is a relatively high rate of food poisoning from shellfish - but that seems to stem more consumption of them raw or undercooked, so the toxins are not being killed.

Worst of all from shellfish is the naturally produced Saxitoxin

With a result like that I'm surprised Puffer Fish weren't ruled out in the Torah and Talmud as well.

Answer 4

Rabbits do not "consume their own waste". You are probably thinking of their rather unusual two-pass digestive system. Rabbits are herbivores, and like all herbivores they have had to evolve a solution to the problem of extracting enough energy from plant material, which is mostly cellulose. On the first pass the food goes into the cecum, which is like a much larger version of the human appendix, where it gets fermented by bacteria that break down the cellulose. It then emerges from the anus as moist round mucus-covered pellets called cecotropes, which the rabbit eats. On this second pass through the digestive system nutrition can be extracted from the fermented plant material, and the remainder is excreted as black feces.

To us that sounds pretty icky, but its how rabbits have evolved, and although cecotropes come out of the anus they are not "waste" in any way.

If you eat only rabbit meat for an extended period you will probably be malnourished because rabbit meat is very lean, and you need more fat than it can provide. But if you can compensate for that with other sources of fat then it shouldn't be a problem.