I am a victim of bacon's deliciousness
Posted by Jim Reilly on Tuesday, January 13, 2009
It is not reasonable how much I like bacon. Sure, we all have plenty of foods we enjoy, but then there's that category of things we feel we were born to love. Coke goes in that category for me, served in a tall glass over plenty of ice. So did Chips Ahoy, until they monkeyed with the manufacturing process several years ago. And so does bacon, served with scrambled eggs and toast, or put in a BLT next to pickles and a glass of sweet tea.
Why is there a place in my brain specially made to love a vein-clogging carcinogen? A walk down the meat aisle in any supermarket is enough to tell you I'm not the only one. There must be a hundred kinds of bacon. The top brands are over five bucks a pound, and they keep selling it! The answer to why we all love it so much lies in our primitive past. For most of human history, hunger stalked our lives, and eating a pig was a pretty good idea. It had lots of protein, and plenty of calories (already in the form of fat) to pack on against the next famine. And if it clogged your arteries? Please. What were you going to do? Live a long life? There's a bear behind you that has other ideas. So, the benefits of loving pork far outweighed the costs.
But now, a love of bacon is like a piece of bad code, left over from an earlier release of humanity, causing fatal errors. I think of it almost like an allergy. An allergy is an emergency response to a non-emergency situation. Your body tells you that ragweed pollen is a big problem, and makes your tissues swell up and your nose run. It's a case of your body telling you something that just isn't true. That's how it is with bacon. And yet I always believe the lie. The pan gets hot, the bacon starts sizzling, and I say, "Oh, yeah. That is exactly, exactly what I want."
If you've ever seen A Streetcar Named Desire, you may remember the climactic scene in which Marlon Brando scoops up Vivien Leigh in his arms and says, in his brutish way, "We've had this date with each other from the beginning!" Well, that describes me and bacon.
And sadly, the bacon is Brando.
Why is there a place in my brain specially made to love a vein-clogging carcinogen? A walk down the meat aisle in any supermarket is enough to tell you I'm not the only one. There must be a hundred kinds of bacon. The top brands are over five bucks a pound, and they keep selling it! The answer to why we all love it so much lies in our primitive past. For most of human history, hunger stalked our lives, and eating a pig was a pretty good idea. It had lots of protein, and plenty of calories (already in the form of fat) to pack on against the next famine. And if it clogged your arteries? Please. What were you going to do? Live a long life? There's a bear behind you that has other ideas. So, the benefits of loving pork far outweighed the costs.
But now, a love of bacon is like a piece of bad code, left over from an earlier release of humanity, causing fatal errors. I think of it almost like an allergy. An allergy is an emergency response to a non-emergency situation. Your body tells you that ragweed pollen is a big problem, and makes your tissues swell up and your nose run. It's a case of your body telling you something that just isn't true. That's how it is with bacon. And yet I always believe the lie. The pan gets hot, the bacon starts sizzling, and I say, "Oh, yeah. That is exactly, exactly what I want."
If you've ever seen A Streetcar Named Desire, you may remember the climactic scene in which Marlon Brando scoops up Vivien Leigh in his arms and says, in his brutish way, "We've had this date with each other from the beginning!" Well, that describes me and bacon.
And sadly, the bacon is Brando.
Tags: "love of bacon" "bacon survival advantage" "bacon brando"
