Blog

Below is a translation of article published by Dr. Hong Hae-geol on “After the Rain” medical news.

I was recently interviewed by an American TV documentary team for a film called “Hope Project” about Korea’s dog meat industry.

The documentary team told me that they plan to meet and collect the opinions of consumers, dog meat industry workers, animal rights activist organizations, and various medical, oriental medicine, and veterinary medical experts, environmentalists, and historians. They also told me that they want to offer a broad perspective on the dog meat industry without judgments about morality and will include social, historical, and cultural viewpoints.

Kevin Bright, a well-known producer of the American sitcom “Friends,” is directing and has already visited Korea three times in 2017 to shoot screen footage.

The film team asked me about the medical efficacy of dog meat and whether there was any validating objective proof. Until now, I had minimal knowledge about dog meat, so I looked for material that would allow me to provide responsible answers. Surprisingly, I discovered that there were almost no studies or research on the nutritional analysis of dog meat.

A paper titled “A Nutritional Study of Korean Traditional Dogs,” quoted by several people, was written in 1982 by Professor Ryu Byeong-Ho of Busan Industrial College (Kyungsung University). People, therefore, have been making claims about dog meat using a study done 36 years ago.

So I kept looking and luckily found data from the Institute of Agricultural Science. Since this is a government agency, we can assume the results of this research study can be trusted. The results are shown in the graph below.

These results are very different from the common belief we’ve held.

Until now, even if most of the media wasn’t directly promoting dog meat consumption, it reported it as at least nutritionally good for your body because, unlike other meats, it is high in protein and low in fat.

Nutritionally, dog meat has more calories, less protein, and more fat than chicken, especially pork, which we’ve been abstaining from to help prevent adult diseases.

The protein contained in 100g of dog meat is 19g, less than chicken (24g) and pork (19.8g). On the other hand, the fat contained in 100g of dog meat is 20.2g, more than chicken (1.4g) and pork (11.3g).

Dog meat is not high in protein and low in fat. Even the experts have been deceived.

In a 2012 interview, Dr. Kim, a prominent oncologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States, recommended dog meat to cancer patients. His recommendation was based on the claim that dog meat was high in protein and a helpful nutritional supplement for cancer patients. I assumed that even he thought that dog meat contained high protein.

But now it’s time to break the dogma. Dog meat is not high-protein, low-fat meat. Eating chicken or pork is better if you want high-protein and low-fat meat.

Do not get me wrong. I am not trying to take the opposing side in the dog meat controversy.

I want to point out that the common belief about dog meat being a high-protein, low-fat meat, which is one of the important reasons it is promoted as a health food, is false.

As a disclosure, I do not eat dog meat. That’s because there is no reason to eat dog meat for the sake of health when there are plenty of other foods.

Dog meat does not contain ingredients that help virility like Viagra either.

I want to say that there is no reason to eat dog meat, which hurts many people who love dogs as a family.

Dr. Hong Hae-geol
Medical Channel “After the Rain” President
Seoul National University Medical School Medical Doctor