For the Love of Bacon

Bacon was one of the first foods I ever loved. And ice cream. Followed closely by potatoes. But there were actually family stories that included the following statement, "The only thing Cathy would eat was bacon and ice cream." Bacon was always first. I still love bacon, though I have added a few more things to my list of "likes."

My mom cooked with pork quite a bit while I was growing up. We ate ham and pork steaks and pork roasts and pork hocks (smoked with pinto beans...yum!) and, of course, bacon. Pork is a forbidden food in some cultures--mainly Jewish--since being outlawed by God back in the Old Testament days. Now, when God outlaws something, there's always a good reason. Maybe, because knowledge was so limited and nobody understood bacteria and other microscopic critters, it was pointless to try to explain the reasons why pork was bad. Kinda like a kid who asks his parents why they're not supposed to do something, and they ask "why?"...and Mom and Day say, "because I said so."  In his book, Jordan S. Rubin, author of The Maker's Diet, pointed out that the Jewish people were spared many of the diseases that plagued their neighbors, probably because of their very strict diet. Rubin does not eat pork and recommends against it.

But what about today? In our era of enlightenment, can we overcome many of the problems with pork by the way we prepare and store it? Can it be a safe meat? This question has been bumping around in my mind for the last year or so.

In the Fall 2012 Wise Traditions issue (a Weston A. Price Foundation publication), there was a long and informative article called "Save Your Bacon," by Kaayla Daniel, PHD, CCN, that provides some excellent information about the healthiness of bacon and pork in general. (Daniel is the author of The Whole Soy Story, which is packed full of research about the dangers and misperceptions of soy.)

Here are some surprises:

• Half the fat in bacon is monounsaturated, mostly consisting of the same oleic acid found in olive oil
• Pork fat contains a novel form of phosphatidylcholine that possesses antioxidant activity superior to vitamin E
• Bacon fat from pastured pigs contains fat-soluble vitamin D
• Although lard (pork fat) has no vitamin A in it, when added to a vitamin A deficient lab rat's diet, that deficiency was notably reversed.

Another interesting point was made in this article about cooked fresh pork. In a recent Weston A. Price Foundation study, eating a cooked pork chop caused the normal blood of healthy volunteers to "clump up in a pathological way." Marinating fresh pork cuts in vinegar, lemon juice or a salt cure appears to eliminate whatever toxin or allergen responsible for the blood clumping from cooked pork. This tip, all by itself, makes me feel better about eating pork!

Now lets talk about everyone's major concern when it comes to bacon -- nitrates and nitrites. Simply put, nitrites and nitrates are chemical constructions. Nitrite is one molecule of nitrogen and two molecules of oxygen. Nitrate is one molecule of nitrogen and three molecules of oxygen. Nitrites per the National Academy of Sciences do not directly harm us. Nitrates and nitrites are part of nature's cycle and are found in plants, animals, and water. We need not fear them. According to some estimates, people normally consume more nitrates from vegetables (80 to 90 percent) than from cured meats.

The culprit is not the nitrates and nitrites but nitrosamines, their carcinogenic byproduct. Nitrosamines can form when nitrates are subjected to high temperatures. For this reason nitrates are no longer used to cure bacon, as bacon is typically fried at very high heat, often to oblivion...at least in my kitchen. Furthermore, some of the nitrosamine problems in pork are quite possibly related to the meat itself or to the shortcut methods used to cure it. "Ready-made" sources of nitrosamines are present in many other places not connected to cured meats. According to Daniels' article, these can include "soy protein isolates, nonfat dry milk, and other products that have undergone spray-drying processes...some types of beer, cigarettes, nipples of baby bottles and the rubber used with braces in orthodontics." In addition, liquid smoke, of the kind used in processing factory-style bacon and other smoked meats, is quite possibly more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke concentrate, according to some studies being done by the European Food Safety Authority.

The point is, traditional methods of preparing food (curing among them) are not the problem. It is when food manufacturers substitute highly processed and unnatural alternatives for the longer, more patient methods of food preservation that health problems arise.

Another byproduct of nitrates and nitrites is nitric oxide. When nitrates and nitrites lose their extra oxygen molecules, they become the very healthy and necessary compound called nitric oxide (or nitrogen oxide), or NO--one molecule of nitrogen, one molecule of oxygen.  NO is what's called a "signaling" molecule in the body because it can literally communicate with other molecules. Nitric oxide plays an important role in lowering blood pressure and triglyceride levels. It improves blood flow and benefits the immune system. Nitric oxide is formed in cured meats when bacteria breaks down the nitrates and nitrites. In the human body, nitric oxide forms when nitrates interact with antioxidants. Vegetables containing nitrites are often packaged with their own antioxidants to make this important conversion. A diet high in antioxidants will provide the same benefit with cured meat consumption.

You may be asking yourself about now, if nitrites are no big deal...maybe even healthy, why is everybody afraid of them? I have to tell you, I certainly was until I tackled the research for this post. I'm not sure I can answer that question except perhaps with the same reasoning that everyone believes fat is bad. There is a certain mob-mentality, if you will, that sometimes attaches itself to an idea and before you know it takes on a life of its own, oblivious to reason or common sense. It becomes entrenched in the common mindset and, in time, indistinguishable from an actual fact. This seems to be the case with nitrites. 

And, once a food component takes on a negative image, the food industry goes into action to come up with a "safe" alternative. Problem is, they rarely go to the trouble to make SURE it's safe. With the onset of the "nitrites are bad" theory, meat manufacturers have given us a product called "uncured" bacon--bacon, they say, made without nitrites. Except for one very important thing-- it's not true.

There's no such thing as "uncured" bacon. The distinction is whether the bacon is cured using the traditional method of nitrite salts or the newfangled "natural" method of substituting celery powder or celery juice for the nitrite salt. The truth is, nitrite is nitrite, whether it comes from a natural source like celery, or whether it's made in a lab. What makes nitrite salts a better alternative is that they can be precisely measured to insure the proper amount for curing a particular cut of meat. On the other hand, celery powder goes through a conversion process to produce nitrite. It is certainly possible to measure the celery powder, but it is completely impossible to know how much nitrite that batch of celery powder will produce. Without that precise measurement, you may get much more nitrite in the the meat than recommended--or much less. Either scenario is cause for concern. 

The key to eating bacon, or any pork meat, confidently is in the way the pig is raised and fed, as with any animal we eat; because what the animal eats will ultimately find its way to us, when we eat it. 

Since Mark and I both love pork, I have been searching for a farm that raises its pigs in a truly pig-natural environment. Here's my criteria:  no soy, no hormones or antibiotics, and the freedom for the pigs to root around the way wild pigs would for whatever they root around for in the wild--roots, I suppose--for at least part of the year when weather permits. I have actually found a fairly local farm that raises their pigs just this way, but now that I know what I know about nitrites and the unpredictability of celery salt in curing bacon, I've been hesitating to make a purchase. I'm sure the farmer's wife (with whom I've been communicating by email) think's I'm a nutcase by now. I even had the audacity to send her an excerpt from the bacon article about traditional curing methods. (Cheeky, I know.)

How do you convince someone--a business, or even a person--that an established practice (like substituting nitrite salts with "natural" celery salts) has been wrong all this time and should be dropped in favor of the old ways? I can tell you that the established nutrition world does not have a corner on entrenchment! Now, if I can find traditionally raised pork with traditionally cured bacon--THAT will be the jackpot.

In the meantime I will put up with the celery-cured bacon if that's what it takes to get wholesome meat. And, no, I will not give up my bacon... don't even think about it!