Roast Pork at Aw Dtaw Gkaw Market

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Pork Vendor at Aw Dtaw Gkaw Market

Nearly every market has at least one vendor selling roast pork — available in whole pieces or cut up (as in the front) and ready to eat, with a dipping sauce ( provided in a plastic bag). In this country we are often told how healthy the Asian diet is by people who are ignorant of many of the foods that Asians love. Pork is one of them as are all innards, eggs, fish eggs and a number of other foods that are forbidden to people who are told that low-fat and low-cholesterol is healthy. Traditionally Thai people ate all of these forbidden foods, were a beautiful people with no weight problems and had nearly no cases of heart disease. Now that we are telling the Thais that their traditional ideas about diet are wrong, you see more and more overweight people and heart disease is on the rise.

Sally Fallon and Mary Enig have written an excellent article on traditional diets in Thailand. A couple items that the article overlooked were insects and the bitter leaves and herbs traditionally eaten with a fiery hot dipping sauce.

Photograph Copyright © 2004 Michael Babcock
All material on this website is Copyright © 2004 Michael Babcock.
Last updated 27 August 2004.