On our blog today we want to give you an idea of the routine of our Joselito’s Happy Pigs, true Olympic pigs which move across great distances out in the fields everyday and which have some truly outstanding characteristics which make them into an exceptional phenomenon.
The grazing land is their natural habitat where they live surrounded by the hundred-year-old trees which provide them with their principal food: the acorn. With a number of yearly re-plantings ranging between 70,000 and 80,000, oak trees cover this Mediterranean forest in which the Joselito pigs live freely. It is precisely this care and pampering by the ecosystem which has allowed Joselito to achieve the FSC Certificate, an endorsement of the sustainable conservation of the forests, thereby making our company the first in the meat industry to achieve that certificate anywhere in the world.
The acorns that grow in these trees provide the Happy Pigs with a high level of oleic acid. This nutrition is precisely one of the main influences on the healthy properties and taste of Joselito’s acorn Iberian ham. The high percentage of oleic acid is naturally incorporated into the meat of the pig and it is precisely this acid, which belongs to unsaturated fatty acid group, which contributes to reducing the bad cholesterol in our bodies. Similarly, the acorn and the grass from the pastureland are foods rich in Vitamin E, a natural antioxidant which helps to eradicate the free radicals which accelerate the aging process and weaken the immune system. This vitamin is also transferred naturally to the meat of the Happy Pig, providing us with all its benefits.
Joselito pigs not only follow a specific diet to achieve the desired characteristics to create what is considered to be the best ham in the world, but they also perform a specific physical activity which contributes to creating a high-quality meat. Each Happy Pig has an area of 3 hectares all to himself in which he moves around freely. They cover approximately 10 km per day through the grasslands in order to find their precious food, the acorn, which allows them to exercise their anatomy while also enabling the fat to infiltrate the meat, with that characteristic streaking that we can plainly see when looking at a slice of Joselitoiberian ham.
A careful nutrition and prolonged daily exercise translate into a unique flavor of the highest quality. These characteristics are acquired through a natural and traditional process which has been carried out for raising the Joselito Happy Pigs for more than 100 years.
