Page 38 - Fall2012

Save Your Bacon!

Sizzling Bits about Nitrites,
Dirty Little Secrets about Celery Salt

and Other Aporkalyptic News

By Kaayla Daniel, PhD, CCN

“When you’re in my house you shall do as I do and
believe who I believe in. So Bart, butter your bacon.”
Homer Simpson

eal Barnard, MD, head of the Physicians Committee
for (Ir)Responsible Medicine, tried to round up an
Narmy of vegans to protest a Bacon Festival in Iowa

last spring, but succeeded in recruiting only six volun-

teers. Why so few? Probably fear of bacon! Not fear of
1
death by bacon, which is what Dr. Barnard hoped to fuel
with anti-meat rhetoric and billboards of skulls and cross-

bones, but vegan fears of succumbing to the lure of bacon

itself! Bacon’s smell and taste are so seductive that many
vegetarians fear it as “the gateway meat.”

But what of those health risks? What about all that fat, cholesterol and
sodium? And what about nitrites? It’s not just vegans after all who warn us
against bacon. Recently, the Harvard School of Public Health announced
with great fanfare that just a small daily serving of red meat would increase
our likelihood of death by 13 percent, while a little bacon, hot dog, sausage
or other processed red meat every day would kill us off 20 percent faster. 2,3
38 Wise Traditions FALL 2012 FALL 2012 Wise Traditions

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