Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Bacon, Disordered Guilt, and Penance Signaling
I’ve written earlier about how we’ve been fed a crap sandwich about saturated fat being bad for our heart health. Take one classic and common example, using nearly everyone’s favorite indulgence: bacon.
Bacon, science tell us, is bad. Very, very bad. It’ll clog your arteries. It will kill you. Yet, our hearts break into song when we savor that sizzling and delicious bacon. Are you sure Adam didn’t take his humanity-damning bite from a bacon strip? Apples are good, dontcha know, so says science.
The smell of my roommate making bacon every morning makes me want to clog my arteries quite unlike ever before
— bellie (@bayleeebutton) February 21, 2018
I love eating bacon. I can imagine Jung calling bacon an archetypal food. Yet, the high priests of diet assure me that bacon will kill me. This sounds like we have a disordered appetite, then, for something this bad for us. This pleasure-peril symbiosis is, soteriologically speaking, a sin. Therefore, eating bacon is a mortal sin. Oh my!
Me: bacon, egg, and cheese is the perfect breakfast food.
My arteries: dude— Felipe De La Hoz 📰 (@FelipeDLH) March 8, 2018
Well, it’s not going to kill you. It may be a key way to stem the Type 2 diabetes epidemic we’re in, as well as other pathologies, but let’s set that aside for now. People, sufficiently nagged about the mortal evil of bacon, offer such penance signaling proclamations as “Should I eat an Oreo, or this piece of bacon. Yum. Well, that one piece of bacon won’t kill me, right? I hope that American Heart Association will forgive me.”
Said the social post audience member; “Look, he paid his tithe to the AHA. He gets it.” Actually, the AHA should be begging our forgiveness, but that’s for another post.
The bacon ain’t done unless you can feel it clogging your arteries the whole way down 🥓
— Caroline Teague (@caro_adele) March 4, 2018
Of course, gluttony is sinful. Enjoying a well-made meal isn’t inherently sinful, nor is eating a friggin’ piece of bacon. Your penance signaling, even if bacon were bad for you, won’t help you, anyhow. However, our having been sufficiently cowed for decades by “experts,” and our need to dietary repent signalling, I don’t expect to see “oh, my clogged arteries” nonsense to go away.
Beef bacon and Oreo cake at 2am… Please god spare my arteries #caloriebingeing
— Haju (@AvaBebo) August 10, 2011
No need for confessional, all. Just raw enjoyment of bacon. Jim Gaffigan puts a fine point on it:
Published in CultureBacon’s the best, even the frying of bacon sounds like an applause. (sizzling sounds) Yeaaaa Bacon!!!! You wanna hear how good bacon is? To improve other food they wrap it in bacon.
Never heard of avacado oil. Can you buy it, or do you have to milk the little guys?
Costco has it.
I’ll check it out. Thanks!