Why Bacon?

(KM) #1

Ok. This may be the most unpopular post I’ve ever even considered writing here. But off I go.

I love bacon as much as anyone else. What I don’t understand is why it’s been given status as a keto/carnivore super food, to be consumed in whatever quantity one wishes. Arguing against bacon:

  1. bacon is primarily produced from factory farmed pigs, fed a diet that’s not natural to them. This leads to skewed omega 6/3 ratio of about 10.

  2. pigs are not ruminant animals, so they don’t “filter” their poor diet, it’s reflected in their flesh and fat.

  3. bacon is often overcooked, leading to glycation.

  4. commercial bacon is often adulterated with preservatives and other chemicals.

I realize that the profile of bacon fits into carnivore. I won’t argue the “too much fat” or “too much salt” angles since we’ve basically thrown out those ideas. And iI realize it IS possible to produce bacon that avoids all four of those pitfalls. It’s just that a. we don’t, and b. that’s not a caveat when advocating eating it.

I don’t think of bacon as a horrible product, but I do not understand why it’s thrown in with butter, beef and eggs as a super food.

Edit: when I say the word “bacon” I mean it the way I perceive it’s being used: American super salted super cured rashers of pork belly.

#2

While I’d love the answer to be “why not bacon?” so that I can continue to dance and swim and roll in it as I presently do, :joy: you brought up good points that I’m dying to hear responses too.

(Geoffrey) #3

Guilty pleasure maybe? It’s tastes so darn good? It’s quick and easy? It’s inexpensive meat?
I’ve never heard it referred to as a super food.
I have wondered the same thing myself but it all comes down to personal choice and our own physiology. Pork in general doesn’t bother me but it’s not a huge staple in my diet.
I’ve looked at a lot of bacon labels but I don’t recall a bunch of preservatives and chemicals being on the ingredients list. The worse thing I noticed was sugar.
I don’t buy commercial bacon because I make my own because mine is so much better than anything I can find in a store.

(KM) #4

I’d agree with all of this; I guess this is a response to Dr. Ken Berry. I’d hold the man up as a god when it comes to advice on carnivore nutrition, but I want to stare into his eyes and get an explanation for why bacon is right up there with steak or eggs. I mean he’s not advocating for anything else just because we like it! Beef, Butter, Eggs and Smoked Salmon! Beef, Butter, Eggs and Blue Cheese! and Chicken Skin! Nope, just Bacon. :nerd_face:

(Geoffrey) #5

Well if you watch him a lot and you probably do as I do, you’ll notice that he isn’t pure carnivore. I think he even says that he is only about 90 to 95%. But in the carnivore community I think this was just a catch phrase that he coined. He does eat more than just BBB&E.

(KM) #6

I think you could be right - it’s catchy and who doesn’t love being told bacon is one of the four foods on earth that’s a good baseline. It’s just disturbing me, this perhaps-not-so-consistent-advice coming from such a respected source. I’ve also listened to him tout the superior profile and safety of beef due to the ruminant advantage, and then this aside, oh yeah, and if you want to eat something that’s totally NOT under this umbrella, as one of the four foods in your super clean elimination diet, that’s fine. :thinking:

(Bob M) #7

I can get bacon from the local farm, when I buy a 1/2 pig. That is a well raised pig, primary on grass and scraps.

Personally, I don’t eat bacon by itself, as I overeat it. I will eat it if it’s in a recipe though.

(Chuck) #8

I grew up on the farm, eating Lots of bacon and eggs. None of my family and friends were fat and by today’s standards skinny. I still love bacon, and we keep bacon grease for cooking so many other foods. I am 76 never been hospitalized, the worst illness has been a mild flu. I did have all of the childhood diseases and never really slowed down. Today after returning to eating farm fresh vegetables, fruit dairy and meat, I am prescription drug free. I don’t eat food factory processed anything, no fast food and no artificial sweeteners. My weight isn’t what my doctor would like it to be but I am weighing the same as I did my military service years.

(Edith) #9

I think its because for years bacon was vilified as the worst possible food anyone could ever eat if they didn’t want to be dead from a heart attack by the age of 35. As we know know, fat and salt are good and therefore bacon is no longer the health villain it was made out to be. I guess you could say bacon is the poster child for all that is wrong with the SAD.

(KM) #10

So basically a backlash against the idiotic advice of the last few decades?

True. But given my four posits, it’s not the health savior it’s being made out to be, either.

#11

I probably need to look up what is glycation… :thinking:
(Is there such a thing as overcooked? Not for me. I mean, if it’s not charcoal, it’s usually fine for almost everything, there are exceptions even for me but bacon especially needs going very far… If it’s not perfect crunch, it’s undercooked to me.)

I had similar thought before. It’s processed item so while I totally embrace and need processed items, I just don’t want to depend on them much.

They both are very valid for me though. Of course, the day may have too much fat only, not an item. I have fattier favs than bacon.
Too salty bacon isn’t nice though, it’s often on the level that I need at least one egg for 20g bacon to be able to eat it… So it’s about taste, not the sodium amoint but that would be horrible too if I wanted to eat lots of bacon (I don’t. 60g is my personal record for sliced or cubed bacon, the smoked pork belly slab that isn’t called bacon is a bit different).

Of course we should choose processed items with good ingredients. We know food industry can ruin almost anything… It’s too easy with processed stuff.

Egg, butter and fresh meat is definitely WAY superior if you ask me. Again, I LOVE my processed items but they just aren’t the best I can just use to get rid of my hunger.

Not here. The sliced, more fun bacon is more expensive than deer.

Whatever I wrote about processed stuff… It’s not for that kind :slight_smile: Though I still wouldn’t go and eat a pound of it as I often do it with fresh meat… And not because of the fat content. But it may be just a me thing as I have read many times that others can eat a lot of bacon in one sitting.

(Pete A) #12

Elixir of the gods.

(Alec) #13

Aren’t those 2 words an oxymoron?

(Robin) #14

MMMMM Bacon.
That’s all I got. No arguments or good justifications.
Just don’t take my bacon.

#15

And 100% of them did not belong to a gym either. They were too busy farming. :+1:

(Bru) #16

Hi, I’m new here. I’ve also noticed all this about bacon, especially as Dr. Berry promotes it. The only thing that gives me pause is that it has sugar added as part of the cure. I used to raise and process my own hogs and made bacon myself, although that was over 30 years ago.

The sugar is added, as I recall, to temper the taste of salt. The recipes vary, but as I recall the salt and sugar are used in equal amounts, so the amount of sugar is not insignificant. I’m old and pre-diabetic, but thin, so my only concern is reducing blood sugar back to normal – but I eat bacon 1-2 times a week anyway.

I got into the low-carb diet nearly 20 years ago, but have slipped in the past 6-8 years, eating way more sweets than I should. So a couple months ago I cut the sweets, bread, and starchy veggies.

Here’s a question: As far as an app, the few I’ve looked at will lay out a diet for your particular situation. What I want is an app where I can plug in what I ate, and it will tell me roughly what the total carbs were. Anybody make one like this? TIA. :smiley:

#17

Are there people who function that way? Wow. I don’t. I HATE not naturally sweet meat but I usually dislike naturally very sweet meat (like beef liver) as well.

NO WAY, not even close, at least here. We have insanely salty bacon and I don’t feel any sweetness. I do know it has some sugar, usually but it’s so minuscule I can’t taste it. Almost all processed meat items here (at least the ones I checked) have <0.5g carbs per 100g according to the label, even the ones with a lot of paprika :wink: I happen to have some bacon at the moment, it has that too and 2.8% salt. That’s super salty, I couldn’t eat it alone without subtly suffering… But that’s what eggs are for. Or unsalted meat but I usually fry it to get 100% crunch!

But it has added sugar in very tiny amounts and I don’t like my processed items to have it in the ingredients list at all. This is one reason of several I prefer sausage and avoid bacon pretty much. Sometimes I desire a few crunchy bacon strips and why not?
But home-raised smoked pork is the best. So if I want flavor, I buy that. Bacon is mostly for crunch like chicken skin. But crunch wise scratchings are the best…
(I am sure there must be some really tasty bacon out there but my experiences aren’t that great - and no way it can get anywhere close to home-raised smoked pork chuck or ham :wink: )

(Edith) #18

Have you ever heard the phrase “Stickin’ it to the Man”? I think that’s what bacon is all about in the keto community. :crazy_face:

(Mark Rhodes) #19

Not endorsing this site, but it does bring up some interesting ideas that we need to at least consider: https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2015/8/live-longer-by-changing-how-you-cook

We cook bacon in the oven on a flat sheet pan, 290F for about an hour, maybe a bit longer for extra crunch. I learned this from @Carl_Franklin . This renders the fat to be poured off for later, the bacon frys slowly in its own baconny goodness and none of the nitrosamines ( in itself, a very contentious topic).

These days I prefer pork belly, in strips, 1/4" thick and air fried 30 minutes at 295F. Heavily salted I thien mix it in olive oil, parmesesean, garlic and oregano.

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#20

Sounds good, I will fry it I bring myself to buy pork belly. I prefer to buy meatier for that money but pork belly IS good…

I always pan fry bacon and won’t change that. What would I do with bacon fat? I don’t like that (how they can mess up pork fat IDK but the rendered our bacon fat isn’t nearly as good as the lard from some fresh cheap supermarket pork!). And anyway, I only eat 2-3 rashers at a time and it gets crunchy in a pan in no time. It releases very little fat, I fry eggs in that, the salty bacon needs eggs with it anyway. It works well for me.
Since I have an air fryer and summer is coming, I probably very rarely will use the oven (it’s a mini grill but the biggest I can get) for cooking meat. It’s just for baked goods at this point.

Scary! I am not afraid of cancer (I believe my genes and lifestyle are good enough to avoid it :wink: ) and I know I gain fat due to eating too much fat (the culprit is often too much carbs but the extra energy comes from fat) but damaging my precious body proteins sounds quite bad.
But I can’t eat food I don’t like and I am the type who always cooked and fried the hell out of almost everything (as I didn’t have beef. when I bought it the first time, it just communicated to me it wants a different method. but it matters little as I virtually never eat beef). Raw eggs are nice, I have that to some extent (no need to be afraid about even raw whites in my case). And salmon is only really good raw but I don’t eat salmon either.
Sigh.
I think I do enough, I even try to avoid my beloved fruits, not frying stuff isn’t something I am willing to do, it would lower my life quality quite signficiantly (for a while, at least). And I already don’t feel I am living at all. But thanks, I will read about these things more, a single article definitely isn’t enough for me and will think about it. Maybe ask my own body’s opinion as well, it knows what it can handle, hopefully. This far it is elated if I eat very low plant carbs and enough protein and fat but it didn’t complain in my old high-carb times because it didn’t know better so it’s not fully reliable.

I have no idea what temperature I use when it happens in a pan though…