UNITED STATES—The price of bacon has risen at more than three times the rate of inflation for the last five years, and while the price has surged so have sales. Crazy, right?
California’s three-year drought has made feeding for pigs more expensive. Also, viral diarrhea has killed about 7 million piglets since 2013, eliminating a tenth of the nation’s pork supply. These are rational reasons for the price increase, but mostly it’s the Bacon Effect that is driving up prices—the unbridled appetite of some Americans for bacon. And its butchers and producers also seeing the opportunity for a little extra ka-ching, who wouldn’t? Throw in the restaurants, too.
The offerings are getting downright exotic. Bacon now being added in greater quantities and in weirder places –to ice cream, sushi and sprinkled on chocolate bars. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull, restaurants are weaving bacon into menus in more unusual ways to encourage impulse eating/spending. Bacon is present now in Spago’s potato-bacon loaf, and in Denny’s maple bacon milkshake. Can Marie Calendar’s be far behind with a bacon pie a la mode?
Whether bacon is “bad” for you or “healthy,” as avid bacon fans maintain, it is an issue conspicuously skirted by those reporting the trend. In a nutshell, the long-established medical view that foods high in saturated fat lead to a greater risk of heart disease spawned the prevailing model of low-fat diets in the last half of the 20th century. (That is what has helped turn bacon into a guilty pleasure.) The fact is, when the experts were advocating a low-fat diet, death rates from cardiovascular disease did decline 60 percent and life spans increased dramatically. In contrast, the new vision is to embrace bacon and butter and beef, the bad old good stuff many people love; and saturated fat is championed by some as part of a healthy diet. Research and truth is complicated. What is simple, though, it that many American taste buds scream bacon. A Public Radio wit called bacon “the gateway meat for vegans,” able to break down the best of inhibitions.
Butchers note that the price goes up every six months because “everyone” is buying it. Well, not everyone – I am not. My diet is a diet for the mind, the body and the pocket book. And it doesn’t mean you take a vacation from your brain or your pocket book. In July, shoppers paid $6.10 on average for a pound of sliced bacon in grocery stores; a cent down from June’s a record high of $6.11, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Four years earlier, the average price was $4.05 a pound. Despite the steeply rising prices, bacon sales climbed 9.5 percent to a record $4 billion in 2013.
Some customers are thinking twice about not buying it, but it still goes in the cart because they need their ‘fix.’ For others, bacon has attained the status of comfort food that reminds them of childhood. So that’s a double whammy – when you link emotion-addiction you’ve got what Don Corleone would call an offer nobody can refuse. And yet I would like to give you the tools to be a master over your dietary life. Remember the great two words, “No thanks.” Remember your pocket book, and if you are cooking, remember that frying bacon is a greasy awful mess, which implies a lot of clean-up time.
Bacon is OK, if you like bacon – ideally tiny bits added as flavoring, like to pea soup, and it imparts a bit of fat which lends body to the soup. Beyond that, if you’re gonna have bacon, respect it for what it is, the end result of centuries of animal husbandry and an uncommon fondness for its sweet salty taste and tangy aroma. Be bold and have it alone, or have it with a runny egg, at most, or two strips atop a pancake; ditch the toast and hash browns.
Denny’s latest creation to boggle the digestive system is a bacon, cheese-infused waffle (I chuckle because when I experienced my most accelerated weight-loss I had pretty much eliminated these from my diet). What’s left? Fruits and veggies, fruits and veggies. There’s something about waffles and bacon and ice-cream that engender a dietary white-line fever, after which it’s refreshing to be reminded we have the fruit and veggie choice which can complement your cheese or your waffle or bacon. But not bacon-cheese waffle and a maple-bacon milkshake: that’s the Bacon Effect speaking. Look at what’s being served with the bacon; you don’t want all that if you seek a better shape and greater contentment.
Just a little incontrollable mojo taking over, that’s all the Bacon Effect is—part of it rebelliousness, smacking the old piñata of health warnings to smithereens, surrendering to the hegemony of taste buds, and forking over well-earned cash—beyond market forces and rationality. Call it the Bacon Effect, call it being human to act with zealous abandon against our avowed financial and nutritional interests.
Grady Miller is the author of “Lighten Up Now,” available on Amazon. He can be reached at grady.miller@canyon-news.com.
