Tito Al's Favorites

          Like many of the foods on this blog, my “Tito Al’s Choice” fried pork skins came from a nearby Chinese supermarket. My friend who was shopping with me (actually the same one who raved about pomelos) recommended the pork skins, and as I thought they were kind of gross and therefore exotic, I grabbed a bag. A few days later, I wanted a snack and decided to give Tito Al’s a try. Despite the mild revulsion that accompanied my knowledge of what I was eating, I opened the bag and crunched down on one of the little puffs. It’s hard for me to articulate why eating an animal’s skin seems so much grosser than its meat – but it does.

Once you get past the strangeness though, Tito Al’s favorite snack tastes essentially like bacon, just with an added crunch. This snack – which a quick Google search reveals to be quite ubiquitous in Chinese and Filipino stores – left me of two minds. As I learn more about the industrial meat production system and find myself perched on the brink of vegetarianism, these pork skins bring with them the same legacy of injustice to animals, workers, and the environment. Simultaneously, since this is the system we currently have, wasting as little of the animal as possible is a good thing and if people like eating Tito Al’s, it’s fine by me. Personally, I didn’t find them tasty enough to keep me eating. I don’t know who Tito Al is, but I hope he varies his diet, because one serving of these fried skin strips contains 10% of your daily saturated fat, 5% of your daily cholesterol, and 9% of your daily sodium.