While the answer to “Can guinea pigs eat apples” is yes, keep it safe. Follow these simple guidelines and start giving your pet the experience of eating luscious apples today! If you have any fun stories about sharing this crispy treat with your guinea pigs, we’d love to hear about it.
A whole roasted pig is commonly served with an apple in its mouth. Despite claims that the apple is there to keep the mouth open and let gases escape from the pig’s body as it roasts, it turns out that “it’s purely aesthetic,” says Steven Raichlen, host of Primal Grill on PBS and author of The Barbecue!
When we were writing we ran into the inquiry “Why do they put apples in roasted pigs mouths?”.
Raichlen added that the use of apples is solely aesthetic. An apple helps make the roasted pig look nicer. The tradition of putting an apple in a roasted pig’s mouth goes back at least 800 years. Like a Thanksgiving turkey, a roasted pig is part meal and part decoration.
Another popular inquiry is “What does it mean to feed a pig an apple?”.
According to Steven Raichlen, author of “The Barbecue! Bible,” pigs were fed apples to fatten them for fall harvest festivals. Putting an apple in a roasted/dead pig’s mouth is perhaps a way of showing the cycle of life and death of a pig; alive or dead, it gets to “eat” apple.
Can guinea pigs eat nuts and raisins?
Yes, guinea pigs can eat raisins, but very seldom and in very limited quantities. However, it’s not the best idea to feed your guinea pigs with raisins. Just like it’s not a good idea to let your guinea pigs eat nuts because they can block the digestive system of these small animals.
Guinea pigs can eat a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs with some of their most popular foods being lettuce, kale, parsley, cilantro (coriander), cucumber, carrot, sweet bell peppers, tomato and apple. Our comprehensive guinea pig food list of over 60 fruit and veg tells you how often it is safe to feed these foods to your guinea pigs.
“Bigger isn’t always better,” Brown said.
How do you know when a pig is cooked?
The pig is fully cooked when a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the rear haunch reaches 145 degrees F. The apple is then placed in the pig’s mouth after the pig is cooked. Doing this any sooner would cause the apple to discolor and collapse.
What do you put in a pig’s mouth when roasting it?
Some traditions place the apple in the pig’s mouth before cooking, while others use an ear of corn or a ball of aluminum foil during cooking, then replace it with an apple before serving. Roasting pigs is traditional in many countries in the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, usually at holidays.