Argentine president: Eat pork, spice your sex life

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina‘s president thinks eating pig meat is really sexy. Many people in this beef-loving nation reacted with surprise Thursday after Cristina Fernandez promoted pork in a speech during which she not only said pork is better than Viagra, but suggested she’s personally proven it.

“I didn’t know that eating pork improved sexual activity,” Fernandez said in a meeting with representatives of the swine industry late Wednesday. “It is much more gratifying to eat some grilled pork than to take Viagra.”

She even joked that “it was all good” after she enjoyed some pork with her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner.

“I think they might be right,” Fernandez said to a laughing audience.

The president’s half-joking speech in which she announced subsidies for the pork industry won prominent play on television and radio stations, prompting discussions on whether Argentines should add more pork to their diet.

Argentines are among the world’s biggest consumers of red meat, and most people here stubbornly reject the idea of replacing beef with chicken, pork or other meats. Despite Argentina lying along rich South Atlantic fisheries, seafood is rarely seen on dinner tables.

Fernandez approved subsidies to keep the price of pork low despite inflation, and her government has also recently subsidized red meat producers after beef supplies sharply declined in the South American country.

The head of the association of pork producers, Juan Luis Uccelli, supported Fernandez’s speech by saying that Denmark and Japan have a much more “harmonious” sexual life then the Argentines because they eat a lot of pig meat.

“In Osaka, Japan, there is a village in which the people who reached 105 years old and ate a lot of pork had a lot of sexual activity,” he told radio Mitre.

Others were skeptical.

“There is no study showing that pork meat significantly improves sexual activity,” Amado Bechara, a specialist in sexual disfunction, told the Web site of the newspaper La Nacion.

Pork better for sex than Viagra?

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina‘s president recommended pork as an alternative to Viagra Wednesday, saying she spent a satisfying weekend with her husband after eating barbecued pork.

“I’ve just been told something I didn’t know; that eating pork improves your sex life … I’d say it’s a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra,” President Cristina Fernandez said to leaders of the pig farming industry.

She said she recently ate pork and “things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true.”

Argentines are the world’s biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.

“Trying it doesn’t cost anything, so let’s give it a go,” Fernandez said in the televised speech.

(Reporting by Karina Grazina; Writing by Helen Popper)