A small trial at the University of Illinois looked at how muscles respond after weight training when people eat different types of pork.
Sixteen healthy adults trained their legs, then had either a lean pork burger, a high fat pork burger with the same protein, or a carbohydrate drink.
Muscle protein building was tracked over several hours using blood tests and muscle biopsies.
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Lean pork led to a bigger rise in amino acids in the blood and a higher rate of muscle protein synthesis than the high fat pork.
The high fat pork blunted the response and was only a little better than the carbohydrate drink.
Exercise remained the main driver of muscle building.
Food type still mattered, and in this case lean meat worked better than fattier meat when the protein amounts were matched.
If you lift weights and want to support recovery, choosing lean protein sources may help.
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Whole foods often perform better than heavily processed products, but not all foods behave the same.
These results apply to ground pork in the short term and do not prove long term outcomes.
This was a small study in young active adults. It looked at short term changes, not long term muscle growth or health.
It was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Funding came from the US pork industry, and the authors reported no role of the funder in the study design.
