Why Pork Is Considered Red Meat Even Though It Looks White

Ranking at the top with "Beef. It's What's For Dinner" as a widely recognizable ad campaign is "Pork: The Other White Meat." The massive media blitz was launched in 1987 by the advertising agency Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt on behalf of the National Pork Producers Council and attempted to rebrand pork as a healthy alternative to chicken. Pigs were actually fattier then, and pork was considered a low-brow meat that no self-respecting haute cuisine restaurant would serve. With the ad's seductive images of pork cordon bleu or pork cacciatore and other various pork recipes, Americans' appetite for pork grew, and the misinformation that it's a white meat took firm hold in people's consciousness.

In culinary terms, sure, pork is still called a white meat, arguably because it's often overcooked, rendering the meat a pale, ghostly resemblance of its naturally pink-hued self. But a pig has two specific physical characteristics that definitively define pork as a red meat.

The USDA acknowledges that when pork is cooked, the color of the meat lightens, but because a pig is livestock — like cows (beef and veal) and lamb — it's considered to be a red meat. Further, animals (and humans) have a protein called myoglobin, which provides oxygen to muscle cells and thus produces energy. Myoglobin creates a red pigment that gives meat its color; the more an animal has, the redder the meat. Thus, chicken has less myoglobin than pork, which has deep-red or pink meat.

Because pigs are bred leaner and more muscular now, the USDA has categorized eight cuts of pork as lean meats. Tenderloin is the leanest, and with less than 5 grams of fat for every 100 grams of meat, making it comparable to a skinless chicken breast. However, fat adds juiciness and flavor to meat, and skinnier pigs produce pork that easily dries out when cooked too long. Arguably, the USDA was responsible for instilling fear of undercooking pork to prevent infection from trichinosis, but in 2024, the department's research agency determined that the parasite that causes trichinosis occurs only in one in 1 million pigs.

The USDA revised its guidelines for cooking pork, lowering the recommended safe internal temperature from 160 degrees Fahrenheit to 145 degrees Fahrenheit with a three minute rest time for whole cuts. That means it's safe to eat pink pork again. (The USDA still advises people to cook ground pork — and other ground meats — to 160 degrees Fahrenheit.) This is good news for pork lovers who have endured a rubbery and tasteless pork chop that's been heated until the meat is bone-white.

We're certainly not advocating serving a bleeding pork chop, but cooking it to medium rare so it retains its naturally rosy hue could very well change your mind about how delicious it can be. Of course, when cooking any meat to rare or medium-rare, the "finger poke test" for doneness is not accurate, and your best bet is a device like the ThermoPro TP01A Digital Meat Thermometer.