Jamon iberico: The ham that reigns in Spain

Only a few hours after arriving in Spain I find myself asking Google: is jamon healthy? You'll hear the repeated assurance from locals that jamon iberico, the fervently worshipped, long-cured back leg of the Iberian black-footed pig, is some sort of miracle product. It's low in cholesterol, they say, due to the pigs' acorn diet in the last four months of their lives. It's actually good for you, they claim with straight-faced sincerity, in the way of the so-called "good fats" of avocado, or olive oil.

Yes, the jamon iberico is, in a Spanish turn of phrase we hear again and again, very "ecological". The argument goes like this: the pigs roam free while feasting on acorns, the exercise forcing the fatty oils into the flesh, upping their quotient of oleic acid (a good thing, by all accounts) while giving it the characteristic marbling effect.

So did the Spanish just get in early on the alternative fact world – or might there be a kernel of truth to their argument? The population isn't exactly suffering the obesity crisis witnessed across Australia, despite ham being consumed in heroic quantities at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Forty-six million people aren't swapping their time-honoured eating habits for the healthy diet pyramid. Instead they're all thumbing their nose at the World Health Organisation's declaration that cured meats are carninogens, and getting on with the serious business of eating delicious ham.

Wherever you are in Spain, jamon is inescapable. From Madrid's vibrant Museo del Jamon chain of cafes, where the ceiling is lined with jamon by the dozen with hoofs attached (la plata), to the capital's upmarket Villa Magna hotel where an Iberico leg is a centrepiece of the breakfast buffet; from the nation's Michelin-starred heights to its raucous tapas bars, the clamped hind leg and the sharp knife is as much a fact of life as breathing.

It would be enough to eat ham in Spain, every meal, every day – a challenge my compadres and I set ourselves, and one that proves unerringly easy to achieve – but getting the inside running on these royal pigs leads us to Luis Mariano Cordero, the owner of Geoactiva Adventures. His jamon safari in the rugged region of Extremadura, one of the natural homes of the black-footed pig, takes us bush bashing, Spanish-style, in his four-wheel-drive through the sun-hammered dehesa – a sprawling, yet managed, network of oak forests.

About 30 minutes' drive from the UNESCO World Heritage town of Caceres there are plenty of oak trees to be seen, some of them 800 years old, but today the pigs are proving elusive. Perhaps they've heard where eating six kilograms of acorns a day in a four-month frenzy will get them.

The gospel of jamon according to Mariano is fairly straightforward. The black-footed Iberian pig is not to be confused with its garden-variety white-footed brethren, who make the lesser jamon serrano. The top-grade jamon iberico de bellota (bellota denoting its pure acorn diet in the last few months of life) is famous across the world, in the way of Beluga caviar, Kobe beef and Alba truffle; jamon serrano is simply nice ham. "They have the bad grease because they eat everything!" says Mariano; "the black pigs have the healthy fat because they only eat acorns."