Are there any positives left to bacon?

[SchubertsTroutWashingMachine]

Apart from the taste!?

It obviously has a lot of negative press, since it is processed and the links to bowel disease, etc, but it does contain protein and iron .
I don't like pork in other forms but fancy something different maybe once per week?
I was thinking about nitrate free bacon, with salad on sourdough. I would ideally prefer organic but good luck sourcing a nitrate free version of that.

So much messaging about good/bad food in general now it's often dizzying!

Can easily live without it but since I haven't eaten it in years I do flirt with the idea. Do you eat it, and if so, what are your thoughts?

Not true. Don’t believe all you’re told. Bacon is delicious and eaten about once a week in this house, despite my neighbour telling me I’ll die of cancer or get tapeworm if I eat it.

@CeeChynaa do link a couple of these documentaries about how disgusting pigs are here.

what the fuck are you talking about? Pigs eat veg, leaves, fruit and normal farm animal stuff. No different to any other animal. What’s wrong with their insides?

More than opinion. Please give me one solid researched fact

I think lots of people are far more disgusting than most pigs.

Ooh I needed breakfast inspiration
sounds great!

Google is your friend here. No need to get so aggressive because I’ve said that pigs are dirty. If you want to keep eating pork in bliss then go for it but all you have to do is read a book, do some research or watch a documentary.

Pigs are dirty because of the environments that they’re allowed to be kept in. It’s just like dairy. Did you know that a certain percentage of blood and pus is allowed to go into milk, cheese and so forth? The animals themselves do nothing wrong but the environment some are kept it and the things they’re allowed to eat is disgusting.

Again, all you have to do is watch a documentary or hop over to Google and you’ll find your facts there. I’ll still be eating Richmond sausages for lunch tomorrow even though I really shouldn’t do so

Bacon is the boyo

Everything causes cancer nowadays!

Find your local organic rare-breed farm and buy their pork. I expect they’d be delighted to show you their happy, healthy outdoor pigs. What PPs describe is not my experience of small-scale pig keepers.

I absolutely adore pigs tbh.
So much so that I long to eat them, with respect.

😂 same.

<Don’t let PETA see this thread>

Google is your friend here. No need to get so aggressive because I’ve said that pigs are dirty. If you want to keep eating pork in bliss then go for it but all you have to do is read a book, do some research or watch a documentary

ah ok. You mean you can’t link me. Cool cool.

Good one

@BlackForestCake
Out of interest do you know why they call it nitrate free if it's not?

Absolutely. Pigs are excellent

Also they are delicious.

Oh, what i mean is a do love pigs and wish that we lived in a world where they were all very well treated and absolutely respected by all who work with and consume them. Absolutely. But I am still an omnivore.

Found this in an article in case anyone is interested:

In January 2018, Finnebrogue used this technology to launch genuinely nitrate-free bacon and ham in the UK. It is sold in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose as “Naked Bacon” and “Naked Ham”, and in M&S as “made without nitrites”. Kirsty Adams, who oversaw its launch at M&S, explains that “it’s not really cured”. It’s more like a fresh salted pork injected with a fruit and vegetable extract, and is more perishable than an old-fashioned flitch of bacon – but that doesn’t matter, given that it is kept in a fridge. Because it is quick to produce, this is much more “economically viable” to make than some of the other nitrate-free options, such as slow-cured Parma ham. The bacon currently sells in Waitrose for £3 a pack, which is not the cheapest, but not prohibitive either.
I tried some of the Finnebrogue bacon from M&S. The back bacon tasted pleasant and mild, with a slight fruitiness. It didn’t have the toothsome texture or smoky depth of a rasher of butcher’s dry-cured bacon, but I’d happily buy it again as an alternative to “nitro-meat”. None of my family noticed the difference in a spaghetti amatriciana.
Nitrite-free bacon still sounds a bit fancy and niche, but there shouldn’t be anything niche about the desire to eat food that doesn’t raise your risk of cancer. Lynn says that when he first approached Prosur about the fruit extract, he asked how much they had sold to the other big bacon manufacturers during the two years they had been offering it in the UK. The answer was none. “None of the big guys wanted to take it,” claims Lynn.

Link

You'd have to prize my weekly bacon sarnie out of my cold dead hands. There are other things that will surely kill me before my bacon sandwich will.

The farmshop near us will do nitrate free bacon if given a bit of notice. Worth asking a local one?

Bacon is foul. It stinks and just looks awful. My kids like it, weirdos that they are.

We had bacon , sausage and mushroom sandwiches at the weekend, I had brown sauce on mine and it was very nice indeed. We get our bacon from the butchers and you can taste the difference between that and supermarket bacon. Tonight I made macaroni cheese with crispy bacon bits on top.

You do know you'll die of something eventually`?

It’s delicious and I couldn’t give a shit about the health side. I don’t eat it daily but probably 3-4 times a month. We have sausages weekly too. If that knocks a year off my life expectancy that’s absolutely fine.
I’d rather a shorter life eating and drinking what I like in moderation, than a longer life on lentils. Fuck that.

🙄

The link between certain types of cancer and nitrates in processed meat is pretty much accepted. One that the press covered widely is the WHO publishing a report last year citing 32,000 cases of bowel cancer were caused by a diet high in processed meat nitrates. There's growing evidence that even a moderate amount of nitrates in processed meat can be harmful.

Your 'you do know that...' little quip has been spouted by people about seatbelts, sunscreen, alcohol, etc. etc. over the years. Of course we all know that. Some people are quicker to make changes than others with most things, and this is no different.

We're learning more about the dangers with our modern diet - UFPs, nitrates and so on - but our eating habits will be slow to change, so down to the individual as ever. I bloody love bacon, and switching to a nitrate free version is no hassle at all - even Tesco sells it!

*UPFs even

I have assembled my ingredients and tomorrow I am having egg, bacon, sausage, black pudding, mushrooms, onion and fried tomato. With a big slice of crusty squishy white bread and butter for the mopping up.

Life is for living.