Mmmmm…Bacon… The Many, Many Joys of Bacon by Dana Carpender

The best perk of my job is free food. Manufacturers send me samples, hoping I’ll like their products well enough to mention them. Andrew here at CarbSmart.com sends me food to try. And one year, my publisher subscribed me to the Bacon of the Month Club (Try here or here). I swear I’m not making that up. What a great gift! A new variety of small-farm, boutique, gourmet bacon every month.

Is There Anyone Who Doesn’t Love Bacon?

Is there anyone who doesn’t love bacon, albeit in a guilty, surreptitious way? I have had Jewish friends who would never eat pork chops or drink milk with a hamburger, who let go of cultural tradition when they smell bacon cooking. I have known several vege-bacon-tarians – vegetarians who just couldn’t resist the salty, crunchy, smoky stuff every now and then.

I’m crazy about bacon. To me, one of the best parts of cruise vacations is eating unlimited bacon at breakfast without having to clean up the grease! (And I’ll have you know I’m possibly the only person in history to have lost weight both times she’s cruised.)

Bacon Has a Bad Nutritional Reputation – But It Shouldn’t

But bacon has a bad nutritional reputation. People just know it’s evil. I’m not going to tell you that bacon is as good for you as, say, a big salad with olive oil dressing topped with chicken. I don’t eat bacon every day. But it’s far from being the worst thing you could eat. (For the record, that would be a deep-fried Twinkie washed down with Coke.)

Let’s look at the numbers, shall we? Three slices of cooked bacon will have about 109 calories and 9 grams of fat, depending on how thickly cut it is and how you cook it. 4 grams of that fat will be monounsaturated, just like the fat in olive oil or nuts. Another gram will be polyunsaturated, leaving 3 grams of saturated fat. And that will be naturally saturated fat, which is vastly better for you than artificially saturated hydrogenated fats. Indeed, natural saturated fats are shaping up to be far more valuable than we ever realized.

You’ll get a trace of carbohydrate and no fiber. And you’ll get 6 grams of protein, about the same as an egg.

Bacon’s not a teeming hotbed of vitamins and minerals, but it has enough to make a contribution. You’ll get 8% of your thiamin, 7% of your niacin, 5% of your B12, 4% of your zinc, 3% of your potassium, and 2% each of your B6, riboflavin, and iron.

You’ll also get about 300 mgs sodium, unless you choose low sodium bacon (a concept which is foreign to me. Saltiness is part of bacon’s allure.) That’s 13% of the government recommendation. I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. But you should know that salt restriction is medically controversial, with many researchers feeling that it helps only a modest subset of people with high blood pressure, who are genetic “salt responders,” and more than a little evidence that for most of us low salt diets are potentially dangerous. Unless you’re hypertensive and salt restriction has worked for you, I wouldn’t sweat a little bacon now and then.

Watch Out for Nitrates

The nitrates – preservatives — in bacon are iffier. They can form carcinogenice nitrosamines in your stomach. This may be why eating processed, preserved meats in large quantity is associated with an increased risk of colon cancer. There are two ways around this. You can seek out nitrate-free bacon at a health food store. Or, easier and cheaper, you can consume vitamin C along with your bacon, since vitamin C interferes with nitrosamines formation. So have half a grapefruit or some strawberries or a tomato or something else high in C with your bacon – like in this wonderful salad.

Low-Carb Bacon, Tomato, and Cauliflower Salad Recipe

 

© 2009 by Dana Carpender. Used by kind permission of the salty author. What do you think? Please send Dana your comments to Dana Carpender.