As do I.
The Random Crap Thread 2: It Hits the Fan.
- Thread starter North_Ranger
- Start date
I was raised in a German family.
Yeah... I pretty much think that bacon needs to get over itself, and America as well. Is bacon good? Yes. Does adding bacon to some things make them better? Yes. Does bacon need to be added to every single thing in the world? No. Am I going to be marked as a pariah for not joining in the OMG BACON IS GREAT train? Most likely. Do I own bacon salt? Yes I do. And it's horrible. On almost everything. The baconnaise was worse. I got them both as gifts, as well as bacon band-aids and bacon scented chap-stick. That shit was horrible too. I don't even really like bacon on pizza. Most of the time I find it to be too tough/chewy/dry to have a pleasant "mouth-feel" when eating it. Or, put more simply, it hurts my damn teeth to chomp down on bacon on a pizza almost as much as chomping down on unpopped popcorn kernels.
Now, don't get me wrong. I really do like bacon. I enjoy 3 or 4 strips of bacon with some eggs and a carb of some sort for breakfast. I like bacon bits on my salads (when I'm not eating Caesar salad) and on my baked potatoes. I like bacon in my potato soup, and have, occasionally, wrapped a lean meat in bacon when cooking. I've sampled various bacon "delicacies" from various state fairs, and I've come to appreciate good, thick sliced bacon from small, local purveyors of smoked and cured meats over thin, cheap bacon from the likes of Oscar Mayer. I do not consider myself a bacon connoisseur, and the fact that restaurants of all types, from Burger King to Tom Douglas* establishments seem to think that bacon belongs in every possible recipe confuses the hell out of me. To me, it would be like saying that sardines or salami should be added to everything. Or any other ingredient, just because it's the fad of the decade. Can you imagine if the edamame fad had been this huge? Edamame ice-cream, edamame donuts, edamame cheeseburgers, edamame jam, edamame on pizza, edamame sundaes, 50 cents for Subway to add edamame to your sandwich, grilled edamame, chocolate covered edamame, deep fried edamame; it would be insane. And to me, this bacon-lust has gotten to be just as bad.
*Seattle's local celebrity chef.
Now, don't get me wrong. I really do like bacon. I enjoy 3 or 4 strips of bacon with some eggs and a carb of some sort for breakfast. I like bacon bits on my salads (when I'm not eating Caesar salad) and on my baked potatoes. I like bacon in my potato soup, and have, occasionally, wrapped a lean meat in bacon when cooking. I've sampled various bacon "delicacies" from various state fairs, and I've come to appreciate good, thick sliced bacon from small, local purveyors of smoked and cured meats over thin, cheap bacon from the likes of Oscar Mayer. I do not consider myself a bacon connoisseur, and the fact that restaurants of all types, from Burger King to Tom Douglas* establishments seem to think that bacon belongs in every possible recipe confuses the hell out of me. To me, it would be like saying that sardines or salami should be added to everything. Or any other ingredient, just because it's the fad of the decade. Can you imagine if the edamame fad had been this huge? Edamame ice-cream, edamame donuts, edamame cheeseburgers, edamame jam, edamame on pizza, edamame sundaes, 50 cents for Subway to add edamame to your sandwich, grilled edamame, chocolate covered edamame, deep fried edamame; it would be insane. And to me, this bacon-lust has gotten to be just as bad.
*Seattle's local celebrity chef.
GasBandit
Staff member
/shun
I agree with the men in this thread who say bacon is great, but not the end-all be-all.
Quite on the contrary, I find bacon obliterates man other tastes, and thus doesn't work very well in a whole lot of dishes. Too strong a flavour for some combinations.
Chocolate, on the other hand, makes everything better. chocolate bikini > bacon bikini.
Quite on the contrary, I find bacon obliterates man other tastes, and thus doesn't work very well in a whole lot of dishes. Too strong a flavour for some combinations.
Chocolate, on the other hand, makes everything better. chocolate bikini > bacon bikini.
GasBandit
Staff member
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SeraRelm
And... where do you think those came from?
Hmmm?
Hmmm?
This actually is really good. I tried it at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto two years ago.Chocolate Bacon.
(I look really weird in this picture. Part of that is the shaved head, this is when my nephew was going through chemo)
That's his penis.
Are you sure it's not minotaur penis?
Pretty sure that, at some point in the past, the pork lobby got worried because they weren't selling enough pork bellies, probably during the 80's when the meat packing economy crashed and got consolidated the way banks have done over the last few years. So the remaining meat giants got together and tried to come up with ways to create demand for their product (kinda like the Dairy industry's "milk it does a body good" campaign). You might remember the "other white meat" ads (and the Beef ads that followed in the early 90's). And the public saw these ads, and it developed a hunger for meat. In the mid-90's, demand for bacon took off, and we started seeing all kinds of bacon burger with double bacon with an extra layer of bacon for extra cash.
Sadly, the bacon bubble might have burst. This means that people aren't making tons of money off tons of pork bellies any more, which probably means we have a bit of a bacon glut right now. No idea if it is due to changing tastes, organic farming, or what, but bacon is cheap, plentiful, and likely to go bad if it's not used up, so that's why we're probably seeing burgers made entirely out of bacon.
--Patrick
ElJuski
Staff member
The agribusiness industry is always trying to expand the ways people eat meat, because meat funnels the surplus of corn, which means that anytime they can get your chubby-bubby into a fast-food restaraunt to eat a shitload of processed foods, its good. The more meat it can push on you in one sitting, the better, because apparently its okay to eat one jumboxlbaconburger instead of two, smaller regular hamburgers.
If people don't think that marketing people are sitting there going, "people like baconlol so let's give them a bunch of baconlol and market it as manlylol and they'll eat it up lol," they need to adjust their sense of reality. All business cares about is trying to force as much food into your elastic stomach as possible, breaking the old myth of the human stomach has a fixed full-point.
Added at: 13:00
And, not to mention, how much of what you get for a buck at McDonald's is real meat anymore, anyway? It's the semblance of meat, but you're not eating Pork, you're eating McDonald's. It's the best card these giant food-makers have made--both genetically sating your desire for sweets and fats by genetically altering a foodstuff to simply be the semblance of said foodstuff, and then covering up the trail so the average consumer doesn't even consider the "meat" source anymore. You don't eat beef at McDonald's, you eat a McDouble, bla bla something or other beef (old, dying dairy cow), where the meat isn't even what's good about the burger, but the cosmetics and the genetic-engineering that coats your brain in the "feel-good-ies" because of the synthetic sweet and fat taste.
If people don't think that marketing people are sitting there going, "people like baconlol so let's give them a bunch of baconlol and market it as manlylol and they'll eat it up lol," they need to adjust their sense of reality. All business cares about is trying to force as much food into your elastic stomach as possible, breaking the old myth of the human stomach has a fixed full-point.
Added at: 13:00
And, not to mention, how much of what you get for a buck at McDonald's is real meat anymore, anyway? It's the semblance of meat, but you're not eating Pork, you're eating McDonald's. It's the best card these giant food-makers have made--both genetically sating your desire for sweets and fats by genetically altering a foodstuff to simply be the semblance of said foodstuff, and then covering up the trail so the average consumer doesn't even consider the "meat" source anymore. You don't eat beef at McDonald's, you eat a McDouble, bla bla something or other beef (old, dying dairy cow), where the meat isn't even what's good about the burger, but the cosmetics and the genetic-engineering that coats your brain in the "feel-good-ies" because of the synthetic sweet and fat taste.
McDonalds has been filling out it's burgers with large amounts of soy since at least the 90's, because soy is cheaper than beef, but can be made to TASTE like beef very easily and has the same consistency as meat. It's one of the reasons why a lot of cyber-punk material has all the meat being soy-based products instead of the real thing.
They are regulated by the USDA because the call it an all beef patty... if there is any soy in there, it will be very small amounts.
ElJuski
Staff member
No, he's basically correct, although the burgers are still 100% beef, they're corn fed and nasty and taste like shit until they've been genetically modified with processed grain products. It all stems from the 1970's when, again, the government dismantled the New Deal farm aids that kept farmers from over-selling corn. Because the demand was so high--the Russians needed a shitton of corn, basically--everything switched its head, and suddenly, corn and soy production prices dropped. With the basement-level corn prices, companies were able to start R&Ding different methods of corn and soy products--and with the invention of things like High Fructose Corn Syrup, we managed to get away from things like real meat. When the Micheal Pollan had his cheeseburger from McD's tested by scientists, the entire sandwich came up 52% corn-based product. Most of the taste, he posits, is the processing and "grill-seasoning".
EDIT: But yes, the "all-beef patty" is basically an old, dying milk cow. When I think of 100% all-beef I think of a healthy, grass-grazed cow. The "beef" you get is so genetically engineered it's a laugh it's still called "beef".
EDIT: But yes, the "all-beef patty" is basically an old, dying milk cow. When I think of 100% all-beef I think of a healthy, grass-grazed cow. The "beef" you get is so genetically engineered it's a laugh it's still called "beef".
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SeraRelm
PROTECT YOURSELF, JUSKI!
ElJuski
Staff member
The corn itself isn't the dangerous part. Technically, it's all the shit corporations do to turn corn into a commodity at any and every cost except for profits. So yeah, that includes Mad Cow Disease, overuse of nitrogen, cows eating corn they can't digest so they get plugged full up of chemicals before they explode, marketing upsizing every soda and meal because that's the only time you'll pay more AND eat more...
yadda yadda.
yadda yadda.
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SeraRelm
Not really, just taunting you for the "zealous" propensity of your last couple of posts.
fade
Staff member
Thing is, everyone knows that stuff is bad for you. No one would be surprised at all if you sang all of those claims on high. Wouldn't stop anyone from eating it, nor does it necessarily mean it's "bad" for you. We've been "genetically engineering" for millenia, except it's usually the slow way, not the recombinant DNA way. Even Bessie the free grazer is the product of forced genetic selection.
Though I'm not sure how you can genetically modify a cow by feeding it after it's already born. You can certainly bodily modify the cow, but genetic engineering would require intervention before conception as far as I know, not through feeding.. There has been quite a stir about feeding animals genetically engineered corn. I couldn't find much in a cursory search on genetically modified cows, except for some that were modified with human DNA to produce a milk similar to human milk.
All that being said, there is a lot of controversy about the unknown long-term effects of genetically modified corn.
Though I'm not sure how you can genetically modify a cow by feeding it after it's already born. You can certainly bodily modify the cow, but genetic engineering would require intervention before conception as far as I know, not through feeding.. There has been quite a stir about feeding animals genetically engineered corn. I couldn't find much in a cursory search on genetically modified cows, except for some that were modified with human DNA to produce a milk similar to human milk.
All that being said, there is a lot of controversy about the unknown long-term effects of genetically modified corn.
I'm not sure if genetically modified is what Juice meant. They are force fed all kinds of steroids and man made supplements to make up for the fact that they are being fed something they derive far less nutrition from than if they were eating what they're supposed to though.
ElJuski
Staff member
No, the cow isn't genetically modified (besides selection). But because of the corn it eats, it needs to be adjusted with medicine. And then when it's made into meat, the meat gets adjusted for consumption. The cow isn't some Wolverine-like mutant.
And, yeah, saying McD's is bad for you is preaching to the choir. But, particularly through reading this Omnivore's Dilemma, it is both scary and fascinating to find out the loops food has to jump through to be put on our table, and who wins and loses when it goes through those hoops. I think people need to be more publicly aware of this stuff so they can make healthier decisions for themselves, their families, the community, nature, and even on a global scale. For the most part, I'm done eating fast food. It's going to be hell, because that shit is delicious, but I've finally been so thoroughly disgusted not only with the food processing, but the mind-games these corporations force on us to feed like happy little idiots.
We all know its bad, but it always helps to be reminded just how bad.
And, yeah, saying McD's is bad for you is preaching to the choir. But, particularly through reading this Omnivore's Dilemma, it is both scary and fascinating to find out the loops food has to jump through to be put on our table, and who wins and loses when it goes through those hoops. I think people need to be more publicly aware of this stuff so they can make healthier decisions for themselves, their families, the community, nature, and even on a global scale. For the most part, I'm done eating fast food. It's going to be hell, because that shit is delicious, but I've finally been so thoroughly disgusted not only with the food processing, but the mind-games these corporations force on us to feed like happy little idiots.
We all know its bad, but it always helps to be reminded just how bad.
I know. I've become such a hard-lined agri-critic this past week. I blame being on summer vacation, broke, and having way too much time to read up on this shit.
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SeraRelm
Made from...
ElJuski
Staff member
Do you seriously like sticking your fingers in your ears and going, "lalala"? I don't see what the problem of knowing how your food is made is, except that you have to figure out some tough facts. But hey, enjoy being blissfully unaware of your shit-food; grass-raised cows taste different, but even without the engineering, it's delicious.
The cows up here eat grass and grains... mmmmm mmmmm good!