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12 Interesting Facts About Bacon

12 Interesting Facts About Bacon

October 7, 2016

Some mouthwatering facts about everyone’s favorite snack. This article was first published in our 29th annual edition, Uncle John’ Uncanny Bathroom Reader.
12 Interesting Facts About Bacon

  • Americans spend more than $4 billion annually on bacon.
  • Bacon dates back at least 3,500 years. The Chinese were the first to cook salted pork bellies. The salt preserved the meat so it could be eaten all year.
  • During World War II, Americans were urged to save bacon fat so it could be used in the manufacture of bombs. (It was used to make glycerol, an ingredient in explosives.)
  • If you’re average, you’ll eat 18 pounds of bacon this year.
  • Three bacon products you can’t eat: Bacon-Scented Bath & Shower Soap; Bacon Strips Adhesive Bandages (Band-Aids that look like strips of bacon); and the Bacon Surfing Cat Clock (a clock with a picture of a cat surfing on a piece of bacon…in space).
  • Kevin Bacon’s favorite sandwich is the BLAST—bacon, lettuce, avocado, smoked salmon, and tomato. (He claims he invented it.)
  • Bacon has been called the food most likely to convince vegetarians to eat meat.
  • Bacon has a compound that produces a pleasing neurochemical response. Result: bacon is addictive.
  • U.S. bacon sales fell sharply in the 1980s because of a lean-meat craze. What turned it around? The bacon cheeseburger. The first one debuted at Hardee’s in 1992. Once it became clear that people were more willing to eat bacon when they went out, restaurants started adding it to everything…and started the modern bacon craze.
  • First recorded death by bacon: In 1543, an English servant named Elizabeth Browne was warming herself by a fire when she was crushed by four sides of uncooked bacon that had fallen from a hook.
  • Research is inconclusive, but here are three things bacon might do: cure hangovers (it has amino acids), improve a fetus’s brain development (it has choline), lower a man’s sperm count (like all processed meats).
  • In a recent poll, 43 percent of Canadians said they’d rather eat bacon than have sex.

Uncle John's Uncanny Bathroom Reader