Report from a bacon tasting

[byron]

I agree that the variations among supermarket bacons tend to be minor, even when you get into most of the premium supermarket brands (the big difference there is the slices tend to be thicker). This is a significant issue because these supermarket bacons, which are also pretty much the same as the standard bacon a restaurant gets delivered from Sysco or US Foodservice, surely account for something like 99% of the bacon consumed in the US. Therefore they establish the bacon taste preference baseline among the population.

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This presents a rather disturbing thought, Sysco being involved in taste preferences. Typically the sales pitch revolves around piece cost,convenience,and packaging, while flavor and pound cost are usually last or omitted altogether. Costs for providing these "features" may indeed make an inferior product higher than a quality one!

The direction we are headed with the major distributors seems to be toward "their label" branded itmes, like "Classic" or "Imperial" by Sysco.

We, as consumers, are relying on Sysco to provide the ingredients based on their purchases backed by their label. The supplier of the product "may" be completely different from year to year, how will we know? This is not necessarily bad, some of us just like to know,including me.

The idea of a bacon tasting is a great one! I just hope the vegan present was not too severely harmned by secondary bacon vapors.

[MGLloyd]

If there is a world in which a bacon tasting, accompanied by mimosas, has to be conducted with chi square tests, ANOVA calculations and what not, then I don't want to be part of that world.

Some things are not amenable to dispassionate measurements, and bacon is one of them.