Why is There Bacon in Flippin’ Everything?

About 20 years ago, my then girlfriend had just returned from her grandmother’s house holding two paper shopping bags full of department store Christmas gifts. She pulled out a few dozen clothing and accessory items, all of which held little interest for me. Then she brought out a cellophane-wrapped plate of something that looked like cookies. I responded with the appropriate level of excitement. Before I was unable to pull back the cellophane barrier, she provided a bit of an advisory, “They are breakfast cookies and they have bacon in them.” The notion that there was such a thing as a “breakfast cookie” and that it actually contained bacon was both alluring and subtly repellant. Nevertheless, I tried one (and then another) and immediately understood the sweet, salty, fatty appeal of the bacon-laced cookie.

Just a few years ago I was attending a food trade show in New York and was oddly tickled and moderately disappointed that bacon was being touted as the new “it” ingredient in just about everything. There was bacon salt, bacon mayonnaise, bacon chocolate, “fakin” bacon, bacon doughnuts, and yes, even bacon cookies (although not nearly as good as what I remembered). The food press got a hold of the bacon story early (around 2007) and wringed the life out of it until there was nothing left but a can of grease and a few snarky things to say about bacon being far too trendy. Bloggers and journalists alike called for the death of bacon (or maybe that was death by bacon) and an immediate halt to the growing bacon trend. But bacon doesn’t have ears and bacon only hears the crackle of the hot grease, which sounds a lot like applause.

Over the past 3 years or so, bacon has become, not just trendy, but utterly ubiquitous. You can’t open a menu, walk past a food truck, or even get an ice cream cone without staining your fingers with bacon grease. Bacon is fatty, salty, and aggressive with an appeal that is primal and indulgent. But while there exists a bacon elite, with their bacon of the month clubs, and their heritage-breed smoked bacon (or to take it one step further, there are the pork belly enthusiasts), most of bacons appeal is largely egalitarian and populist.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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J.L. A.

9:25AM PST on Feb 16, 2012

Sounds like a twist on the marketing of pork being the other white meat...

send a green star

Michele W.

9:21AM PST on Feb 13, 2012

This just makes me feel sorry for the poor pigs.

Jane B.

5:53PM PST on Feb 11, 2012

Bacon makes me puke. If you want to eat it, kill it yourself you cowards.

Robyn L.

12:08PM PST on Jan 29, 2012

Not a bacon eater. I have never tasted the stuff. So well meaning friends of mine presented me with....drum roll..... Kosher bacon salt.
Vegan. Kosher. Kind of oddly addicting. I kept the jar through a couple moves as a kitchen joke.

But I have a theory on the bacon fad. People know deep down that hey should eat more veggies. But to taste buds saturated with sweet and salt and, yes, fat, veggies are too simple, too clean, yes, even boring.
So borrow a trick from old days and add a bit of flesh to your greens or beans.

IF, and that is a huge if, people dropped a quarter to half pound of meat from a meal, replacing it with a couple ounces of stripped fried stuff, there would be a net gain, nutritionally.

I understand that in a homestead, pigs are efficient converters of scrap to food.
But unless Wilbur is in your yard, is the downside of the food, all ethics aside, worth it?

Sheri P.

11:56AM PST on Jan 29, 2012

I think this bacon obsession is utterly ridiculous....

KS G.

12:32AM PST on Jan 28, 2012

Thanks for the article.

Krystal M.

3:09PM PST on Jan 27, 2012

I don't get it either. It seems like anything self-destructive (cigarettes, for instance) is embraced.

colleen p.

3:08PM PST on Jan 27, 2012

bacon vs chocolate. everything together. bacon dipped chocolate, and every thing dipped in choclate, and wrapped in bacon.

even our selfs. our in and outsides can be coverd in them. soak in a chocolate bath while eating. wrap bacon on yourself while eating it.

Rosa m.

2:52PM PST on Jan 27, 2012

GROSS! That's why the high rate of obesity in adults and kids. They market processed junk like crazy and people get seriousy sick from it.

OmegaForPrez n.

1:44PM PST on Jan 27, 2012

Bacon is in everything now and that is just the speed of cooking. I remember a few years ago when chocolate covered bacon was the weird thing and the thing to try. Now, last year I made bacon flavored ice cream and everyone thought it was new and weird. This year, bacon ice cream is old news. I'm a molecular gastronomist so it is different for me because I try to use tons of ingredients in a different way than we are used to. But it is the fad. Who knows what will be the fad ingredient in a few years?