
Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Fat - marcopolis
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-bacon-package-product-design/
======
twic
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...](https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.jpg)

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...](https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.jpg)

Even if it's streaky:

[https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.j...](https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.jpg)

I'd be interested to know if this is because of UK (or EU!) food packaging
regulations, or if it's just local custom.

~~~
toomanybeersies
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.

~~~
joshontheweb
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.

~~~
toomanybeersies
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.

------
smsm42
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!

~~~
swalberg
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.

~~~
smsm42
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?

~~~
dragonwriter
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.

~~~
smsm42
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.

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

~~~
SwellJoe
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?

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

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

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

~~~
oxide
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.

------
colejohnson66
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.

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

~~~
bbarn
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.

------
hinkley
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?)

~~~
douche
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.

~~~
redblacktree
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.

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

------
jedmeyers
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...](http://img-
fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0abba_orig)

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

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

~~~
semi-extrinsic
[https://xkcd.com/418/](https://xkcd.com/418/)

------
icantdrive55
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.

~~~
a_thro_away
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.

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

