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Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Fat
- icantdrive55 10y agoAnd I'm done with the Internet for today. I will go out into the world, and try to interact with people. Some days I need a kick in the butt.
- cylinder 10y agoI experienced a similar sentiment when I saw this post. Something related to how bored of the internet I am these days.
- a_thro_away 10y agoBacon packages may seem of no consequence, but let me say kindly, just like Labor unions, there was a very real reason for these regulations to exist. Such things saved all of our rear ends until maybe today. A child of the late 60s, I remember some of the very lousy business practices that brought this stuff about; but I now realize that most businesses that would try something like that today would be tried in the public court in nothing flat. Then again maybe not; it didn't stop the outrage of the EpiPen.
- baconfat 10y agoNah, not really. It really is of no consequence, and is a glaring reminder of how much more hacker news is like reddit than it used to be.
- dibujante 10y agoI wish they'd package it the other way around. I buy bacon the for the fat, period.
- SwellJoe 10y agoYou know there's fatback or slab bacon which is pretty much all fat or much more fatty than the more common side/streaky bacon, right?
- SteveNuts 10y agoIsn't it usually ridiculously salty? Even more so than regular bacon?
- oxide 10y agoYes. IMO the saltiness is a dealbreaker. Some regular bacons are borderline too salty for me though.
- jschwartzi 10y agoSalt pork is usually used to add flavor to other dishes like beans or greens.
- oxide 10y agoAh, see, I once made the mistake of purchasing "economy bacon" to save a buck only to find out what you just said. there was a salty breakfast had that morning.
- SwellJoe 10y agoIf it's intended to be eaten as bacon, then no...it's cured similarly to bacon. You're thinking of salt pork (made from the same cuts but uncured and preserved with salt). Not that I'm recommending any of this. I'm mostly vegan and haven't eaten bacon in ~23 years. But, there are very fatty bacons out there, and fatback is usually among the cheapest meats available. Not sure if your local supermarket would have cured fatback bacon, but I grew up in the south where there were ample fatback options.
- bfuller 10y agoFind a local butcher. Not just for this, but to enhance every aspect of your carnivorous lifestyle.
- maxlybbert 10y agoYeah. I don't want 100% fat, but when I buy bacon I am looking for fat.
- colejohnson66 10y agoThis article doesn't address why they do it. There's a quote from an ad a few decades ago, but the article doesn't answer the question. Interesting read nonetheless.
- tptacek 10y agoIt might be less about health and more about the fact that low-quality bacon is almost all fat.
- bbarn 10y agoYeah, this is really what you'd determine comparing brands. The mega brands like hormel, oscar mayer, etc will almost always have massively imbalanced fat proportions, and a lot of the time the smaller, or more expensive brands will be a lot closer to even. Fat's delicious in bacon, but it needs the muscley bits to hold it's own and not taste like chewing on lard.
- joezydeco 10y agoAnd, on top of it, they don't show the back window in question.
- ptaipale 10y agoI think it is fairly obviously this, quote from the article: the consumer sees a relatively unbroken field of red protein, creating the illusion that the bacon is leaner than it is. Fat is bad, so it's hidden. But fat tastes good, so if you look at the back window, you see it.
- a_thro_away 10y agoI seem to recall people (felt they) couldn't identify leaner bacon or some felt they were being ripped off because not enough lean, just fat. All about the time, IIRC, that fat had began to be loudly vilified by the health community - butter, cheese, meats, milk, and as a whole believed fat unhealthy. That was likely perceived a hard sell to health-conscious customers, so they hid the fat.
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- twic 10y agoIn the UK, we mostly eat back bacon rather than the streaky bacon which predominates in the US, and it is usually packaged like this: https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.jpg https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.j... There's no artful hiding, but the label covers the fatty tail. Sometimes, fancy bacon is shingle-packed, but the top isn't covered: https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.jpg https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.j... Even if it's streaky: https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.jpg https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.j... I'd be interested to know if this is because of UK (or EU!) food packaging regulations, or if it's just local custom.
- smitherfield 10y agoHuh, so it's YOU who are the actual monsters behind "Canadian" bacon!
- batbomb 10y agoCanadian bacon is from the loin. it's different than back bacon.
- Finbarr 10y ago"Canadian" bacon is often reformed as well in my experience. British and American are natural cuts. Here's a good depiction of the 3 varieties: http://www.endlesssimmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BaconCooked.JPG http://www.endlesssimmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Baco...
- henji76 10y agoIn France, what we most often find labelled as bacon in supermarkets is the left one.
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- electic 10y agoI just added weight reading that article. I need to cut down eating bacon but it is so good.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agohttps://xkcd.com/418/ https://xkcd.com/418/
- hinkley 10y agoWhen plastic contamination in food was a big deal a few years ago I switched to the stacked pack bacon or buying it straight from the butcher. I always liked mine a little crunchy anyway, but I didn't know the meaty bacon could taste just as good or better than the stuff I was raised on. Now I can't go back. I've had what England calls bacon and it just looks and tastes like a good boneless pork chop sliced like lunch meat. If I want that I'll have the poor chop and a dash of spices (have you tried lemon pepper or chili powder on a pork chop?)
- douche 10y agoI started buying my bacon from the butcher counter in the supermarket, and I'm now spoiled and can't go back to the packaged bacon. I like my bacon thick-sliced, and while I don't hate fat, I don't want to cook up a pound of bacon and drain off a whole coffee can full of grease - which I have done with packaged bacon. The funny thing is, that nice, good quality bacon that's up there with the filet mignons and shish kabobs at the counter, is the same price per pound as the Oscar Meyer thin-sliced garbage.
- paulmd 10y agoIn my experience the best places for bacon are at independent grocers. Both of them carry bacon in the cool cases like other meats, not behind the deli counter. One was $5 per pound and the other was $4.50 per pound. It's just plain bacon, not the fancy smoked kind, but it's massively better than the usual Hormel stuff. Both of them also carry ends-and-pieces for even cheaper. Some of the packages have pretty big pieces, like third or half slices. Tends to be a bit fattier overall but that may be to some people's tastes.
- redblacktree 10y agoHave you tried baking your bacon yet? Line a shallow baking pan with foil and lay out strips, put it in a cold oven and turn it to 400 degrees. For thick-cut bacon, it will be done in 22-25 minutes. The ends may get a bit crispier, but it does such a wonderful job rendering the fat throughout the slice. SO tasty. None of the chewy partly-cooked fat. At all.
- drxzcl 10y agoAre we all going to ignore the fact that the author doesn't know what "prosaic" means?
- smsm42 10y agoTwo things I find fascinating here: 1. People obviously know bacon is fatty, and buy it exactly for it, but still somehow hiding that fact seems beneficial. Moreover, it looks like at the base of this fact lies the anti-fat stance which now has been proven to have rather weak factual basis. I.e. we have a marketing trick counter-acting the effect of the bad propaganda. 2. The government-mandated rear window is an example of a regulation that solves non-existing problem (if people didn't want fat they wouldn't buy bacon) by ineffective means (people that are so naive as to not know bacon is fatty surely wouldn't also know to look for that back window - how often you actually turn over the packages you buy in the supermarket?). Yet a lot of educated well-paid people are working tirelessly at implementing and supervising such regulation and they persist for years. Because otherwise what would happen? We would never know bacon has fat!
- a_thro_away 10y agoThe regulation wasn't there because it was a thoughtful idea; it was implemented because there were real, loud, consumer complaints about how much fat/lean ratio was in bacon in a hidden container, IIRC.
- smsm42 10y agoAny source on "real, loud, consumer complaints"? If you remember it, it must be based on some sources.
- a_thro_away 10y agoWell, to start with, the zeitgeist of the times - https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8846774/Wall.html?sequence=2 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8846774/Wall.htm... Then you can look at the consumer complaints to the US Government which spurred Congressional hearings in 1965 bringing about the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, where just for example, a consumer complaint testified that "As if bacon packaging wasn't deceptive enough, <*> has the practice of putting pieces of 100% fat slapped together under the bacon completely out of sight", among so many others. Get those transcripts. Personally, the only reason I am aware of it was that it was on the news, and I was a kid; I mean, the news was only 30 minutes nightly so topics like Vietnam got airtime and were memorable; upset consumers I do remember. In those days, I think, bacon was a necessity, very much a staple, more so than today because of meat or nitrate avoidance - it is what you had for breakfast; people knew how to buy bacon as they had been buying it from a butcher directly, could gauge lean/fat ratio and had very high expectations, but apparently were being ripped off. You'd have to find those newsreels to verify my claims.
- jedmeyers 10y agoIn Ukraine people like to eat salted raw pork fat called 'salo', and of course no one tries to hide its appearance. It looks like this: http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0abba_orig http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0...
- a_small_island 10y agoFat is good for you. Cut the carbs if you need to lose weight. Meaningless source of food.