As a vegetarian, I get a lot of similar responses from people when they find out about my meatless diet. The number one response being, “Wow, I wish I could do that, but I just couldn’t live without meat.”

Sometimes, people get specific about which meat it is exactly that they couldn’t live without. It shouldn’t be a shock that bacon tops the list of meat that people just can’t imagine parting ways with.

Americans love bacon; it’s everywhere. Hamburgers, breakfast tacos, regular tacos, wrapped around shrimp. 

Pretty much any food item you can think of can be made to incorporate bacon. I’ve seen Bacon-flavored vodka, and even Denny’s had a bacon milkshake for a while.

Personally, I just don’t understand the craze. 

Bacon is greasy, it’s a nightmare for your heart, and I’ve always hated it. Even when I was a meat eater, I still didn’t jump on the bacon bandwagon.

I think our collective obsession with bacon comes from an even bigger obsession with wanting intense pleasure and all-around intensity in our food.

“American” food is always the biggest, the greasiest and the most ridiculous. 

Fast food restaurants, in particular, are always pushing the envelope for how much stuff they can cram on a burger in order to outdo competitors.

Because of this food war, we’ve taken a liking to overloaded burgers and such. Due to its greasy nature and cult following, bacon is inevitably one of the ingredients used to amp up a burger or sandwich or taco or milkshake.

Take Jack In The Box’s new burger that literally has bacon inside the beef patty. They can’t just put bacon on top of the patty, they have to cook it inside the burger itself. 

When I first saw the commercial I went through a rollercoaster of emotions. At first I scoffed, then I wanted to vomit, and then I got sad.

This is our culture.

This is what the people want.

I think it says something that we all freak out over greasy strips of pig flesh and just can’t get enough of the stuff. 

In our society we want only pleasurable experiences and we want a lot of them.

This is capitalist mentality, and it certainly carries over into our food. 

We want the biggest portions. 

We want a mountain of bacon, dammit.

We want a sandwich as big as our face with three burger patties smothered by a hill of bacon covered in a sea of cheese. 

Because it tastes good and if we’re paying for it, well we better get our money’s worth.

Being on the outside of this, though, just leaves me seeing it all as very bizarre. 

I can’t really eat fast food, it’s all just French fries to me, so I don’t really get why everyone is so fired up over a burger patty with bacon stuffed inside it. 

So what? Big deal, go eat some kale.