When did bacon become a seasoning?

In case you missed it, bacon is now so much more than just the cured meat of a dead pig. It’s also a flavoring. Like cinnamon. Or chocolate. Sometimes, it is even paired with cinnamon or chocolate.

There are bacon candy canes.

Jack In The Box restaurants were selling Bacon Shakes a few seasons ago. That’s basically: a smoothie with bacon in it. If that’s too heavy, you can swill back a bacony soda. Or Bakon vodka.

There’s bacon in chocolates.

And in cookies.

The Food Network posted an article called “50 Things to Make with Bacon“, including a peanut butter and bacon sandwich with banana slices.

One of the Food Network recipes is for “bacon oatmeal.” Because there’s nothing better than turning a healthy breakfast into the one that causes the heart attack. And forget having a pancake breakfast with bacon only on the side of your plate. Every bacon lover knows you also put the greasy stuff inside your pancake batter (recipes #45, #47).

According to LiveScience, sales of bacon in 2013 reached nearly $4 billion just in the U.S. Of course that’s an all time record high. “And since the introduction of the Perfect Bacon Bowl, anything you can put into a bowl — cereal, pasta, rice, soup — can now be served in a container made of hot, crispy bacon.”

I get it. People love bacon.

But this needs to stop.

We don’t need any more burgers with bacon or bacon with burgers.

We don’t need to wrap slices of bacon around any other food. Or chop it up and add it into foods where it has no business being.

There will come a time when humans will look back at America’s bacon obsession in horror. In shock.

It’s not just because pigs are seriously intelligent. Or that they’re capable of showing love, curiosity, compassion, joy. Although, all of those things are worthy enough reasons to stop this bacon insanity. All of those are reasons to see pigs as much more deserving than being carved up into strips.

More than 65 million pigs—right now!—are wasting away in filthy, dank, dark and otherwise horrific factory farms across the country. If they’re breeding sows, they can’t turn around. They’re in awful gestation crates that would be considered unacceptable methods of torture if we used them on our worst criminals.

And think about the toll 65 million 200+ pound animals take on our environment. On our health. If you’ve ever gotten sick from a salad or a piece of fruit, or even from drinking water, you may have factory farm runoff to thank. “Pork products are known carriers of foodborne pathogens, including E. coli, trichinella, listeria, salmonella, and pork tapeworms. One study of 256 pork samples taken from 36 different grocery stores found that up to 63 percent of the samples were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria,” reports PETA.

According to recent research, diets high in meat are more likely to cause an early death. Researchers for the National Cancer Institute have linked meat to an increased risk of prostate cancer. A study from Yale University found that meat-based diets can cause stomach cancer and esophageal cancer as well as lymphoma. “Cured” meats such as bacon, sausage and hot dogs are also linked to a higher risk for pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal.

Conservatively, it takes 1,630 gallons of water to produce a pound of pork.

Conventionally raised animals, including pigs, are fed diets high in genetically modified corn and soy. The production of GMO grains involves heavy spraying of herbicides and pesticides, which pollute the air, water and soil, as well as pose risks to human health.

Pigs, like all conventionally raised animals, are also fed high amounts of antibiotics, which make pathogens resistant to treatment with antibiotics.

And then, of course, all those pigs have to go poop. In just the U.S., factory farm animals produce nearly two trillion tons of animal waste per year. The waste is a high pollution and contamination risk that we’ve barely begun to feel the repercussions of.

No, you’re not just eating bacon, or bacon flavored whatever.

You’re eating GMOs, and antibiotics, and fear and anguish. You’re eating away our water supply. Our clean air. Our healthy fruits and vegetables. You’re eating the poop that gets into our water supply. You’re breathing it too. You’re eating the destruction of our nation’s land—land that could be farming low impact foods and empowering small, family farms to thrive. You’re eating pigs who deserve a better reason for living.

So, please. Please stop putting bacon in everything.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Image: Zanthia, the impulsive buy

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Cheese is my weakness. Camembert and cheddar, stilton and swiss, mozzarella and mascarpone, gouda and goat’s cheese, feta and fresh quark – I love them all. And while it may not be great for my waistline or as environmentally pure as organic lentils, at least I can eat it knowing that it’s a more eco-friendly choice than, say, tucking into a juicy slab of steak. Or can I?

My vegetarian friends certainly seem to think so – many of them seem to subsist on cheese. Trust me, I can understand why – it’s an easy source of protein, calcium, vitamin B12 and other nutrients that omnivores typically get from meat. It’s easier than boiling up lentils from scratch and, let’s face it, for most people cheese just plain tastes good.

These same vegetarians might feel confident, or even a little smug, that they are making good dietary and green lifestyle choices. After all, going vegetarian is better for your health, the welfare of animals and the environment. Isn’t it?

Maybe not. Actually, cheese is pretty much just as bad as meat on all counts. Here’s why.

1. Animals die.

You are drinking the milk of the cow rather than eating its flesh, but all the same animals die. Maybe you already know that most cheese is made with animal rennet and you take care to buy vegetarian cheese. Sorry, but you’re not off the hook!

How do you think the mother cow (or sheep or goat) gets milk? She has babies and since after six months her milk production declines, she needs to keep having babies. What do you think happens to the bull calves? They get killed. And since dairy cattle and beef cattle are generally different breeds and there’s little value in raising the male offspring of dairy cows for meat, this happens when they are still babies.

Often, the calves are slaughtered immediately or just left to die, then added to the farm’s compost heap. Otherwise they may be raised for veal, which is usually a cruel process where they are kept in a confinement in semi-darkness and denied proper food, so their flesh stays white.

However, there are varieties of veal that are more humanely raised, allowing the calves to stay with their mothers and eat grass. Surely the ethically consistent position is either to cut out meat and dairy, or to eat the “humane” veal along with your dairy? Oh and by the way, mama cow will likely only live until she is five to seven years old – instead of the 20 years that is her natural lifespan.

2. Animal cruelty.

Most EcoSalon readers will be familiar with concentrated animal feedlot operations or CAFOs. These factory farms are not just prevalent in the rearing of meat animals but in the dairy industry, as well. The book The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason cites a Cornell University Study predicting the number of dairy farms in the United States to decline from 105,000 in 2000 to 16,000 in 2020, while the number of cows per farm and the total milk production both increase.

Many cows are confined to a single stall where they are fed and milked for a single year and if they do get to move outside, it’s usually on a dirt lot rather than on pasture.

The modern dairy cow produces three times more milk than its counterpart from 50 years ago, as a result of breeding, and many cows in the United States are injected with bovine somatotrophin (BST), a genetically engineered growth hormone banned in Canada and the European Union. This boosts milk production by 10% but the site of the injection can become swollen and tender and the injections can increase problems with mastitis, a painful udder infection that affects one in six dairy cows in the US.

The natural lifespan of a cow is 20 years but most dairy cows are killed between five and seven years because they cannot withstand the unnaturally high rate of milk production. By “killed”, I don’t mean euthanised – the process of dealing with “downed” animals involves dragging and winching them by the hoof with a tractor and taking them to a truck to deliver it to the slaughterhouse.

3.  Cheese has a huge environmental impact.

Slate had a great article on the environmental impact of cheese, just before Christmas. The truth is that rearing dairy cows or goats is a carbon-intensive process – and for some reason, sheep are even worse. They need to be fed and most dairy cattle are not exclusively grass fed, so that requires grain to be grown and shipped in. If they are kept in CAFOs, there is a huge manure problem that can pollute local waterways. (If the untreated waste doesn’t go directly into streams and rivers, it’s sprayed onto fields through an irrigation system, but often in quantities too great for the soil to absorb, and then in heavy rain it runs off into the creeks).

According to a local environmental group in Michigan, Lake Erie’s new “dead zone” is linked to runoff from livestock waste. Finally, there’s a problem that sounds like a joke but really isn’t – dairy animals are ruminants that fart and burp a lot of greenhouse gases, specifically methane. Scientists are working on reducing this problem by improving the diets of cattle, but it’s a long haul. All this is just to get the milk – to get cheese, it requires further processing and storage at just the right temperature.

4. Cheese isn’t healthy.

I know many people who go vegetarian – or simply cut out red meat – for health reasons. Yet they eat cheese. This makes no sense to me. In what universe is cheese a health food? I want to move there!

I’ve looked up the nutritional statistics on Fitday.com and generic cheese is 27% fat. A whopping 62% of that is saturated fat, while only 22% is protein. Admittedly you do get a decent serving of calcium with your fat, but there are 84 calories and a heart-stopping 20mg of cholesterol in just one slice.

By contrast, a typical cut of beef compares favourably with 26% protein and 20% fat, of which just 39% is saturated fat. You don’t get so much calcium, but that’s more than compensated for by the fact that 20% of your meal is iron, something many women lack. There is also less cholesterol in beef than cheese.

So pound for pound, beef is healthier than most cheese. Unless of course, you are eating low fat cottage cheese, in which case it’s only 1% fat and 12% protein. But then you could be eating healthier meats as well – lean cuts of beef or lamb, low-fat poultry and fish with healthy oils.

All this is not to make anyone feel guilty. But I do think there is little point in going vegetarian and then making up the shortfall with cheese. Sure, you can eat organic dairy in moderation from small family farms with good environmental and animal welfare practices – such as Straus Family Creamery in Northern California – but you can do the same thing for meat. I know plenty of ethically minded omnivores who eat meat and dairy in moderation and source both with equal care.

I believe if you are going to cut out meat, you need to fully embrace cooking with and eating beans and lentils. There are some great recipes – I am a meat-reducing omnivore myself but one of my favourite all-time recipes is vegan – a Lebanese eggplant moussaka with chickpeas that comes to me via Nigella Lawson.

Free-range and organic eggs are another good source of protein in moderation as well, though caged eggs still account for 98% of US egg production. (In Europe it’s a different story – sales of free-range eggs were due to hit two billion eggs a year in 2009 in the UK, exceeding battery egg sales in value terms, while from next year eggs from battery hens will no longer be sold in German supermarkets). You may want to check out Vanessa’s post on how much protein the human body actually needs.

Images: Joi, fklv, smoodysarah, orinzebest, TheBusyBrain

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