Observation: As a proportion of the population students seem to eat far, far more bacon than any other group. We consume great fleshy mountains of the stuff. Why?

Bacon is the most overrated food on the planet. Its robotic banality as it sizzles away in the pan, its gristly texture, the elastic irritation of the rubbery fat – it’s all a huge fucking turn off. Not to mention that all it tastes like without ketchup is salt. Not to mention that when it’s frying in the aforementioned pan it looks like David Cameron’s jowls. Do you want to eat David Cameron’s jowls?

Why is this so popular?

Apparently you do.

The refrain “bacon makes everything taste better” is something I seem to hear constantly. Nobody cares that bacon is shit for you. Not just because of it’s obviously astronomic salt and fat content (you could guess that just by its smell). Bacon often contains a preservative called sodium nitrate that is a terrible thing, potentially even a carcinogen (you could Google this or you could trust me).

Once the bacon is eaten all that is left is this delightfully spunky substance.

Let us consider for a moment just how damn American bacon seems to be. It gets given out for free in hysterical campus events. It is the foodstuff du jour of the ignorant fat lunk-headed frat rat from sea to shining sea. It is they who, like a growing number of (mostly male) students here, come out with entirely egregious paeans to the supposed qualities of this salty, fatty, matter.

You can imagine Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld sitting down and tucking into a plate of bacon shitwiches the night before they invaded Iraq.

The English speaking world is increasingly swamped by bacon mania (I’m not making this up – it has its own wikipedia article). Regard these ‘novelty’ bacon related items available from Amazon: Bacon Syrup -“spice up a drink or sauce with this unique flavoring!” Baconlube – Bacon Flavoured Massage Oil – “Keep it sizzlin with Baconlube!” and of course, Bacon Soap – “Great way to carry that bacon smell with you all day!”

The strangest part of all this is that Bacon is not even a real thing. It’s a euphemism we all require so that we forget what we are actually eating, pigs, which are animals as intelligent and curious as any pet you have ever owned. The word ‘bacon’ is itself a sort of ironic distance from this grim reality. It’s all enough to make me want to eat muesli for breakfast instead.