Pork Belly

Food · Protein · Food, Typed Supps

Thirty-one grams of fat, and more thiamin than almost anything else you will eat.

Stage by stage

Rendering (The oven): Slow heat drives fat out; a rack keeps it from being reabsorbed on resting.
Energy density (Stomach): 384 calories per 100 g, the highest of the cuts here.
Thiamin (Nervous system): 0.512 mg per 100 g — half a day, and thiamin stores last only weeks.
Fat profile (Liver): More monounsaturated than saturated, which is not what most people expect of pork.

Timing

Nothing to time. Roasting on a rack and draining is the change that alters what actually reaches the plate.

Time to effect

2–3 weeks: How long thiamin stores last without intake.
Per 100 g: Half a day’s thiamin and a third of a day’s selenium.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Low-FODMAP, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Keto.

Satiety

97 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.

Environmental footprint

12.3 kg CO2e and 1796 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Pig meat" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £9 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Thiamin
Protein
Selenium

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 384
Protein: 27.4g
Fat: 30.8g
of which saturated: 11.2g
Sodium: 68mg

Food vs. supplement

Thiamin is unusual among vitamins in how quickly it runs out — body stores last two to three weeks rather than months or years. That short buffer is why deficiency appears so fast in people who stop eating properly, and why pork’s contribution is worth more than the milligrams suggest.

Kitchen tip

Roast on a rack over a tray. The fat that renders out stays out, instead of being drawn back in as the meat rests.

Common myth

“Pork fat is the worst kind — it’s all saturated.” In reality: It is not. Pork belly carries 13.04 g of monounsaturated fat per 100 g against 11.19 g saturated, so the larger fraction is the kind found in olive oil. It is still an energy-dense cut at 384 calories per 100 g and worth treating as occasional — for that reason, rather than for a belief about saturation that the numbers do not support.