Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Fat | Hacker News Reader

Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Fat

bloomberg.com

63 pointsmarcopolis59 comments

In 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.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.j...

Even if it's streaky:

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.

What you Brits call bacon is not really a bacon. Too much protein, not enough fat. This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon#/media/File:Speck-1.jpg is a bacon ;)

[sips tea]

[continues to pity the poor foreigners]

[nods in agreement]

[sips tea]

Quite.

That is fat with a hint of food attached to it. The very idea of streaky bacon turns my stomach now, it's just fat and the idea is disgusting.

Do you know why fat disgusts you, or it subconscious?

Butter, bacon, rib eye, dairy cream...they sound so delicious.

Unhealthy? Maybe. But not more than soda, pixie sticks, etc. Seeing those doesn't turn my stomach; it just makes me sorry for the poor pancreases.

How do you feel about a ribeye steak?

Is there a lot of fat on it? The more fat I have to cut off of it, the more unappetizing it becomes. I want meat to be as lean as is physically possible.

If I eat gobs of fat, I get nauseous, (gross stuff coming up) the same way you so when you have a horrible cold and a tonne of mucus dripping down the back of your throat and into your stomach.

Interestingly enough, in New Zealand, shoulder bacon predominates, which is even leaner.

I think that shoulder bacon makes superior bacon butties, whilst streaky bacon is better in dishes with other things (such as macaroni cheese), where the fat adds a lot of flavour to the surrounding dish.

I'd never heard of that; it looks great! Although i must register some skepticism at the claim of leanness:

http://www.ellesmerebutchery.co.nz/shoulder-bacon-sugar-cure...

It reminds me a bit of the gammon we have in the UK, which is meat from the hind leg, cured like bacon, but sold in joints or steaks, rather than thin slices, and which is quite lean:

https://www.ocado.com/productImages/281/281291011_0_640x640....

Meanwhile, in South Africa, shoulder bacon appears to be something else again:

http://www.freys.co.za/products/bacon/shoulder-bacon/

I recently spent a yeah in New Zealand and while I really like it there, I could never find bacon like at home in the US. Even the streaky bacon wouldn't crisp up like US bacon. I'm not sure what the difference is. Perhaps the NZ streaky bacon isn't cured in the same way? I'd love to know if anyone has the answer.

I think possibly NZ bacon is cured wetter than American bacon?

I guess it's an upbringing thing, but I really dislike crispy bacon, it just seems dry and overcooked to me.

https://australianbakerycafe.com/ is the closest I've found on a trip to Atlanta GA, but I'm still searching for proper Australian style Bacon near where I live.

A dozen different varieties exist in foreign supermarkets whereas in North America unless you go to a specialty shop you're limited to crappy fat-laden bacon and, if you're lucky, back bacon.

Huh, so it's YOU who are the actual monsters behind "Canadian" bacon!

Canadian bacon is from the loin. it's different than back bacon.

"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/Baco...

In France, what we most often find labelled as bacon in supermarkets is the left one.

Two 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!

Not every pork belly is the same, and the fattier ones are sold as a cheaper brand. If you've ever bought the really cheap bacon, it shrivels up to nothing as it cooks. So the window does let you know what you're getting and let you make a price/value decision about how much fat you're willing to pay for.

I suspect that brand affinity may have something to do with people not using that window regularly. Once you find a bacon you like it's going to be relatively consistent. But without the window you can't really compare two brands.

You can do what consumers of other things do - buy a sample of each, taste which one you like the best and keep buying that one. It's not like we're talking about taking mortgage here, it's a pack of bacon, costing how much, five bucks?

If you are looking at premium brands, significantly more perhaps; lots of people are frugal enough that even if they are going to try more than one, they'd like to narrow the selection down before doing so -- and even decide whether or not its worth buying any at their regular store, or whether they need to try elsewhere.

If you're looking for a premium brand, a small window is not going to help you much. I don't know how good your sight is, but mine doesn't allow me to bake it and taste it through the plastic ;) and if you're into premium brands, the sight won't be your defining factor.

The 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.

Any source on "real, loud, consumer complaints"? If you remember it, it must be based on some sources.

Well, to start with, the zeitgeist of the times - 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.

It's a fine regulation. Anyone who cares can visually evaluate an individual package prior to purchasing it. With no window, it'd be a crapshoot to do things like price shop, because who knows what is in that completely covered package.

If you don't trust the package, nobody forces you to buy it.

Yes of course not.

But it is still the case that the regulation isn't as silly as you made it out to be, it's not exactly expensive for producers to leave a clear window in their clear plastic packaging and it has some benefit to consumers.

Maybe it's related to this discussion, but I was comparing packages of bacon using the window just today...

I wish they'd package it the other way around. I buy bacon the for the fat, period.

You 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?

Isn't it usually ridiculously salty? Even more so than regular bacon?

If 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.

Find a local butcher. Not just for this, but to enhance every aspect of your carnivorous lifestyle.

Yes. IMO the saltiness is a dealbreaker. Some regular bacons are borderline too salty for me though.

Salt pork is usually used to add flavor to other dishes like beans or greens.

Ah, 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.

Yeah. I don't want 100% fat, but when I buy bacon I am looking for fat.

This 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.

It might be less about health and more about the fact that low-quality bacon is almost all fat.

Yeah, 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.

I 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.

And, on top of it, they don't show the back window in question.

I thought I was missing something. I'm glad it wasn't me.

I 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.

When 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?)

I 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.

Have 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.

My in laws do that. I can't argue with their results but it's still damned irregular to me.

In 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.

I like pork chops with a rub made of ground dried sage, with a bit of dried garlic, salt and black pepper.

And i don't think it's accurate to say that British bacon tastes like a pork chop - it is cured and may be smoked, and has a pretty distinctive bacon flavour.

In 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_b2c0...

Fat is good for you. Cut the carbs if you need to lose weight. Meaningless source of food.

I just added weight reading that article. I need to cut down eating bacon but it is so good.

https://xkcd.com/418/

And 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.

Bacon 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.

I experienced a similar sentiment when I saw this post. Something related to how bored of the internet I am these days.

Are we all going to ignore the fact that the author doesn't know what "prosaic" means?

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