Why Bacon?

(Edith) #21

Oooo, I’ll have to try that but without the cheese.

#22

I wouldn’t use cheese either but now I see olive oil… It’s super fatty meat, it doesn’t need any added fat! Is it for the flavor? I dislike that flavor, I add lard or butter to lean things and of course, nothing to fatty things, they bring it themselves :slight_smile: I still don’t eat simple but try to simplify things when I can!

(KM) #23

Ah, so you ARE following the Mediteranean diet! :rofl:

(Bru) #24

Ok, I dug out some of my personal old recipes for dry cure bacon. One dated 10-9-85: For 11 lbs. of belly, I used 4 oz. salt and 3.5 oz. white sugar. My notes: Could be a bit saltier.

Another from 11-4-89: 25 lbs. of belly, 8 oz. salt, 8 oz. white sugar. My notes say that it could be slightly saltier.

From a book that I based some of my recipes on, “Great Sausage Recipes,” published in 1976: For 25 lbs. of belly, 10 oz. salt, 5 oz. sugar.

These recipes tasted much like store-bought bacon, which was my goal although I smoked it for a lot longer than store bought.

I have some Hormel Black Label bacon in my fridge. I just checked the ingredients and as you probably know, they are always listed starting with the largest quantity used first and descending from there: "Salt, sugar, dextrose . . . " As we know, dextrose is a type of sugar, so there is a fair amount of sugar in there.

(Mark Rhodes) #25

I bought lamb the other day and made it the same way but with added lemon juice and feta. SO yes, you have caught me, fully committed to blue zone idiotology.

(Edith) #26

The thing is, the sugar is used in the brine, and while I understand that some does get absorbed into the meat and coats the exterior, how much really? Most of the sugar gets dumped with the brine when the meat is finished being cured. .

(Robin) #27

Welcome to the forum!
There are many apps people here recommend. I no longer use one, but in the beginning I used carb manager. I put in what percentages I wanted…like % fat,% protein, and % carbs. I used their search to find my food. It worked good enough. And I entered how much I ate.

It was a good way to get a feel for the right foods. It also calculated how many calories I had taken in. (that’s when I learned that I needed to eat more.)

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #28

There are a number of apps available. Two that I’ve seen mentioned favourably on these forums are Cronometer and MyFitnessPal. Don’t take their dietary recommendations seriously; just use the information about carbs in the food.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #29

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(Mark Rhodes) #30

Were you in your hidey hole and suddenly “My Bacon Sense is TIngling!!! To the FORUMS!!!”

(Geoffrey) #31

I make my own bacon but I use a wet brine. Here’s my ingredient list.
6 tablespoons Morton’s kosher salt
6 tablespoons ground black pepper
1.5 cups dark brown sugar
2 cups dark Maple syrup (optional)
3 cups distilled water
2 1/2 teaspoons Prague Powder #1 (pink salt)
So with a wet brine there is more sugar than salt but prior to smoking most of it gets rinsed off.
Since becoming a carnivore I don’t even use sugar anymore. I find it’s just not that necessary.
As far as store bought bacon goes, you can find bacon that doesn’t have sugar in it, or at least we can around here.

#32

It’s not informative, only says it has more salt than sugar and more sugar than dextrose. I prefer carbs, sugars, salt info per 100g and we have it.
But I looked at the ingredient list, googled (this bacon doesn’t even have normal “sugar”, I knew about the dextrose but there are trickier ones…)… I may not buy bacon again, it’s not important for me anyway… I buy pork belly with zero added sugar instead if I want something similar.

I almost never buy meat products with added sugar and as time passes, I get stricter and stricter. I can do it as I can live without the sugary ones just fine. Bacon a few times a year was a funny thing and it’s not like I don’t eat worse things occasionally… But it feels best to stop eating the ones I won’t particularly miss. I didn’t eat bacon for decades, I can do it again, without feeling any loss.
I won’t give up the pig farm and farmer’s market smoked things though :slight_smile: They are great. But I very rarely eat those too.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

You’d better believe it! :bacon::bacon:

Seriously, however, the questions raised are good ones. I find that, while I greatly enjoy bacon, I also don’t eat it all that much anymore. It is a great accompaniment to eggs, and that is how bacon probably entered the BBB&E diet. I am also quite partial to bacon, egg, and cheeseburgers.

It remains true, however, that the best elimination and autoimmune diet is beef and water. As much as I hate to admit it, lol! :cut_of_meat:

#34

Not common here but I think I saw that before… Whatever I wrote about stopping buying bacon, it’s not for that :smiley: Bacon is fun now and then. Not needed but I am big on eating not necessary but fun things here and there… :wink:

(Mark Rhodes) #35

I suspect you meant ruminant? Because I recall sitting with Georgia in 2019 in Denver and she cannot stand beef. Her carnivore go to is lamb and our mutual friend The Sodfather would agree. I cannot recall Amber’s stand on venison except for it being too lean perhaps?

#36

I have used both My Fitness Pal and Carb Manager. I found Carb Manager to be a lot easier to use when entering my recipes for a meal or being able to quickly and accurately find proper results in their database of food, especially if it’s an item I’ve recorded before. It’s far easier. It’s also easier to adjust the numbers of a result if it had been entered incorrectly by others, or if my particular package or production has different numbers. MFP was a real headache in search engine, corrections, and recipe entering. Once I switched to CM the headaches disappeared. It is easier to use. It tracks everything quite well.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #37

No, I wrote “beef” intentionally. People who cannot eat beef are few and far between. Mike Eades quotes a doctor from a century ago who put everyone on an all-beef diet, to the effect that over two million years “any weakling who couldn’t eat beef was bred out of the race.” I am very sure there are not many people around who have an actual allergy to beef proteins.

That said, there is that infection that can cause a beef allergy, and with seven or eight billion of us running around, there are probably a few who can’t tolerate beef, but they have to be pretty rare. (As their meat should be, too, lol!)

So in general, beef and water is really the best elimination diet. As always, however, all medical statements are subject to individual variation.

(Jane) #38

Do you eliminate both the brown sugar and the maple syrup?

I have made bacon a couple of times but haven’t found that WOW recipe yet.

Eta: the last batch was too salty but soaking it in a cup of water for a couple of minutes and patting it dry before cooking took care of that.

(Bru) #39

I used the dry cure method, so no brine.

(Bru) #40

Thanks, that’s what I’m looking for. :slight_smile: