THE recent media coverage highlighting the claims that processed meats such as bacon and ham are harmful for the body and can cause cancer is not entirely new considering that God in The Bible warned in the book of Leviticus not to eat these foods.

There is a list of animals that are described as “unclean” and in some cases an “abomination” and these include pigs, shellfish and seafood, certain birds and insects, and fish with no fins or scales such as eels.

Most people choose to totally ignore this advice from the god who created all species and knows their intimate habits, namely that most of these prohibited creatures are either parasites, predators or scavengers.

Ecologically they do a great job at cleaning the planet both on land and in water, but because of the toxins in their flesh due to their diet which could include decaying flesh, rotting waste and sewage would make humans that eat them sick, God in his great wisdom and love gave a list of what animals are ‘clean’ and therefore safe to eat.

Even Christians ignore this and think it is only for Jews, however Noah boarded the Ark with unclean animals in twos and clean animals in sevens.

He wasn’t Jewish, but he understood what animals he couldn’t eat.

Perhaps now these much overlooked Biblical guidelines will go back to the days of Noah when also non-Jews heeded the Creator’s advice.

One reason bacon and ham is harmful is because it has to be preserved at all, unlike other meats like chicken, beef or lamb.

Pork begins to decay almost immediately and has to be ‘cured’ or pickled in salt or brine to stop it from rotting.

You don’t ‘cure’ anything unless it’s sick.

There is also a big link between food poisoning and people eating seafood which clean the water by imbibing impurities.

As a chef I was told in college that pork and shellfish were ‘high risk’ foods that had to be cooked and stored differently to other foods in order to try to make them safe, but there is no 100 per cent guarantee.

We may not want to keep 100 per cent ‘Kosher’ but the Biblical dietary laws are certainly food for thought, and the recent findings by the World Health Organisation only seem to back that up.