Good day all. I was wondering around aimlessly in the wastelands of the Interweb tubes when I came across this article from the Foundation for Economic Education. They posted 15 interesting facts about bacon. I am now shamelessly stealing it and reposting it with some commentary. Why am I doing this you ask?
Did you know that Americans spend $5 BILLION dollars on bacon annually? It’s true. According to the Fee article:
America is currently in the midst of a decades-long trend of “bacon mania.” In 2018, bacon accounted for $4.9 billion in US sales, up from $4.7 billion the previous year and an increase of more than 20 percent from 2012.
Also, research indicates that eating bacon improves the brain, and makes you smart.
Most health research focuses on bacon’s negative impact. (So typical, right?) However, some research shows positive health outcomes associated with bacon consumption. A University of North Carolina study, for example, found that choline, a micronutrient in bacon, is key to healthy brain development in unborn babies. You got that, moms? You have an excuse to eat bacon.
So, all you soon to be new moms? EAT BACON!! It’s for the children after all.
Recently, a lot has been made about how you should go vegan to “Save the planet! Well, it looks like bacon is actually environmentally friendly.
Americans don’t appear to need more reasons to eat bacon (beyond its deliciousness), but they might have some. Turns out bacon and pork have a much smaller carbon footprint than beef. One recent study, for example, concluded that growing beef requires 28 times more land and 11 times more water than bacon and pork (as well as other foods such as eggs and chicken).
The reason for this is simple. Pigs will eat pretty much anything. Vegetables, fruits, grains, the dead bodies of your enemies and meat. I wonder of Greta Thunderbrain likes bacon?
Now a good slab of bacon can run $4-$9 a pound, but if you figure inflation into the equation, bacon is actually far cheaper today then it was a century ago.
In 2014, Fox News reported that bacon prices hit “a new all-time high” after reaching “a whopping $6.11 per pound.” As bacon lovers worldwide already knew, the price, which soon fell when consumers and producers adjusted, was abnormally high—up 40 percent from just two years before. However, bacon wasn’t really more expensive than ever.
As Marian Tupy has shown, the price of bacon, when adjusting for wages and inflation, is about 86 percent less today than it was 100 years ago. (Think about this next time you’re at the grocery store selecting a package of delicious bacon, and give thanks to your free-market economy.) If Fox News had used real prices instead of nominal prices, they would have found that those “all-time high” prices were still a fraction of the real cost of bacon in, say, 1919, when the nominal price was $0.53 a pound and average nominal wages were $0.25 an hour.
So bacon cost people the equivalent of over 2 hours of work. Today, depending on variables, you’re probably looking at about 15 minutes per pound of bacon. Definitely prices have come down. Of course, I wonder what the cost was back when the Chinese invented bacon? The Chinese? Invented bacon? It seems so.
Americans may love their bacon, but the savory snack predates the discovery of the New World by thousands of years. Food historians say salted pork belly first appeared in China around 1500 BC.
I mentioned this interesting fact to She Who Must Be Obeyed, since she is Chinese. She thought it was hilarious, then started working on some pork. While she does love her pork and she does eat quite a bit, Americans tend to eat far more bacon.
A typical American consumes 18 pounds of bacon each year. That weight is slightly less than your average car tire.
I suspect that number is a bit on the low side actually. Perhaps slightly less then the average truck tire perhaps? It’s certainly far more nutritious then a tire.
Bacon is high in saturated fat and contains additives such as nitrates and nitrites that cause concern among scientists who fear it could be linked to gastric cancer (more on that later). However, overall bacon is a hearty and nutritious food packed with essential vitamins and nutrients. As Healthline points out, bacon contains:
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- Vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12
- 37 grams of high-quality animal protein
- 89 percent of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for selenium
- 53 percent of the RDA for phosphorus
- Plenty of minerals such as iron, magnesium, zinc, and potassium
In fact …
A serving of bacon is three average-sized slices. Each serving, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, contains 7.5 grams of protein; nine grams of fat (3.8 of which are saturated); 30 milligrams of cholesterol; 435 milligrams of sodium; and 120 calories. A 12-ounce can of Pepsi, meanwhile, has zero grams of protein and 150 calories.
In other words, when you feel the urge for a Pepsi, or worse, a Woka-Cola, eat some bacon instead. It’s better for you. It’s also the preferred breakfast meat. Over 70% of bacon is eaten at breakfast. The rest? Baconburgers of course! (Which makes me wonder, would bacon improve the flavor of veggieburgers?)
America’s enthusiasm for bacon goes well beyond pseudo churches and fringe academies, however. A survey conducted in 2014 by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork supplier, found that 65 percent of Americans would make bacon America’s “national food.”
Reading through this, you would think that Americans worship bacon. Well, there is an official bacon religion.
Few people likely know that there is officially a bacon religion. That’s right. The United Church of Bacon has more than 25,000 members around the world. The church, whose official symbol is two slices of bacon worshiping the sun, has even performed hundreds of weddings. True, the faith was launched as a parody religion by skeptics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean its tried and true believers don’t take its seventh commandment—to praise bacon—seriously.
Of course, there are always those who hate the idea of people actually enjoying their food. One of these is the World Health organization.
Scientists have long suspected there was a link between bacon and cancer. For many, the link became official in 2015, when the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that every daily portion of processed meat (including bacon) raises the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. What many overlooked was how small the relative risk was, according to the 22 medical researchers.
I suspect most scientists are progressive liberal vegans who look on in horror as Americans devour Bacon. Then there is the issue of the World Health Organization’s credibility. It doesn’t have any thanks to the Great Panicdemic of 2020.
“We’re talking about relative risk,” Lisa Cimperman, a registered dietitian at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, told Time magazine. “That means that, for a healthy person, eating bacon every day will raise their overall risk of colon cancer from something like 5% to 6%.”
A lot of the apparent risk is the nitrates used in the curing process. The answer is simple, buy bacon that doesn’t use it. Basically, you need to make your own choices and decisions. As for the author of the piece on the Foundation for Economic Education, he put up the following disclaimer, and it’s one I will make use of myself.
*Disclaimer: This writer endorses the consumption of bacon and believes it should be eaten at every reasonable opportunity. However, he (thankfully) is not a nutritional expert.
And neither am I. What I think I need to do is head to the supermarket and buy a couple of pounds of bacon. I tend to like the thick sliced bacon myself, not the thin sliced. Oh, as for those who want Turkey bacon?
Thatisall
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