There is no other kind of bacon than streaky bacon.
That is all.
Both this response and your litmus test are the funniest things I’ve read all day. Kudos!
It’s considered bad for you here, too. Of course, that wasn’t always the case, but by the time people started to worry about fats and such, bacon was already so ingrained as an unhealthy indulgence that I don’t think the Canadian Bacon Producers of America would get very far with a campaign of “Back bacon: it’s the healthier bacon.”
How are you so sure you’ve never had food poisoning?
They told me the same thing when I was in the ER with (not-mild) food poisoning.
In the United States that is all. However, there are parts of the civilised world where you can get better bacon, e.g., Australia and England.
I suspect that in the US the better parts of the hog are turned into Canadian bacon and ham.
I never made an argument that food poisoning doesn’t exist. From what I understand, it sucks a lot. That is how I am certain that I haven’t had food poisoning. I definitely don’t think throwing out a sealed package of always been refrigerated bacon is going to in any way increase your risk of food poisoning.
This new concept that people are always suffering from mild bouts of food poisoning is not something I have ever heard. I certainly needs more evidence than swabbing food they way they swab telephone booths and say “look! oogy germs!” Frankly, I think that an overly sterile environment is unhealthy in the long term. Maybe that is why I’ve never had food poisoning.
Do tell. I’d like to go looking to order some, but what’s the difference with the bacon you’re describing?
English Bacon is generally a dry cure loin back bacon (nonsmoked usually, but sometimes smoked), similar to Canadian Bacon. I think what they make bacon with, we make into porkchops.
Most of us don’t have a lab at home, so smell and sight is pretty much our only method of testing. Well, except for just feeding it to someone and waiting to see what happens.
Ya see, the English have bacon all upside down. They use the back, we use the belly.
I didn’t say that I haven’t taken a sick day “due to a cold or flu;” I said that I haven’t taken a sick day for any reason whatsoever in well over a year. This includes completely unrelated illnesses such as colds and influenza (which are respiratory tract diseases); more importantly, it includes the more relevant foodborne illnesses such as gastroenteritis, which is often referred to (erroneously) as “stomach flu” or “24-hour flu.” (BTW, if you have nausea and vomiting, you don’t have a respiratory tract infection such as a cold or influenza; you likely have some type of foodborne illness.)
And if we’re going to trade anecdotes, I’ll share another. I carpool with two co-workers, who routinely take a sick day every month or so due to “something they ate” or because they were vomiting the night before. These illnesses are acute and transitory, because neither of them ever take off more than one day. Since the cause of such symptoms is usually food-related, they either have poor hygiene practices in their house, or they’re eating spoiled food, like many people do. I haven’t had the “stomach flu” in the decade since I started throwing refrigerated food out after its “use-by” date, and throwing leftovers out after 3-4 days.
Mild food poisoning doesn’t necessarily “suck a lot;” it just makes you sick to your stomach and may or may not be accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea.
And I guarantee that if you eat a package of sealed bacon (even one that has always been refrigerated) that is months past its “use-by” date, that it will increase your risk of food poisoning. If you don’t agree with this, how much time would have to elapse before you did agree? A year? Five years? At some point, you have to agree that it’s unsafe to eat. We just disagree on how much time has to go by. I prefer to simply go by the “use by” date and leave it at that.
Finally, you have no basis to state that the investigators in the show were “swabbing food like they do telephone booths.” As I recall, they tested the food for the presence of pathogenic bacteria in sufficient numbers that would be likely to cause illness.
This is complete horseshit. The Norovirus is a highly contagious disease, and will easily pass from person to person without exposure to any contaminated food. Of course it’s not influenza. No doubt the Norovirus can be spread by food, but I can assure you, I’ve seen it spread faster than light when no food was involved. That is definitely how I got it. I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that all tummy aches are foodborne based on this experience.
Of course the Norovirus or any other virus has absolutely zilch to do with the bacon in question.
Well, I did hedge my bets somewhat by using the term “foodborne illness” which includes contaminated food as well as spoiled food. Nevertheless, I didn’t mean to imply that “all tummy aches are foodborne,” just that many are, particularly in the absence of an viral epidemic.
With respect to Norovirus, the wikipedia article states that it is responsible for “approximately 90% of epidemic non-bacterial outbreaks of gastroenteritis around the world, and may be responsible for 50% of all foodborne outbreaks of gastroenteritis in the US. …The viruses are transmitted by faecally contaminated food or water and by person-to-person contact.” So (as you state) even viruses such as Norovirus can be spread by food.
However we’re not necessarily talking about epidemics here. We’re talking about the occasional stomach upset often accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea that many people get.
While approximately 50% of foodborne illnesses may be caused by viruses such as norovirus, nearly 50% are bacterial in origin. Cite.
Many of these bacterial pathogens are due to contaminated food (during packing or preparation), but at least some arise because the food has been stored too long and has spoiled.
In the absence of an epidemic or a mass case of food contamination, I’d suspect individual food-handling practices and/or food spoilage due to improper storage (including eating food that has been stored for too long).
I’m amazed that some people would get sick that often. The only time I get a stomach ache or diarrhea it is clearly connected to me gorging myself at night after too much beer. Beer on it’s own can have that effect on me. As for vomiting or nausea, it happened that one time fifteen years ago when I had the Norovirus. I haven’t had a stomach flu since. So maybe my system is just more capable at dealing with these types of pathogens.
Or the carpoolers saying “something they ate” is a lie, or the carpoolers are stupid and can’t tell bad food from good. Really, food-related upsets that are bad enough to cause loss of work should be pretty rare even if one regularly eats food a day or two after it expires. Are these guys feasting from a dumpster on a regular basis or something?
I’ve had food poisoning that was bad enough to miss work, a grand total of three times in my life. Two of the times were definite, the third was highly likely. Oh, and none of these times were with home-prepared food.
(BTW - we did NOT eat the bacon and aren’t planning to do so either, just not worth it).
Yeah, some people just like to take days off of work. And a stomachache is usually the easiest way to fake it, since it doesn’t require faking nasal congestion, cough, and sneezing.
I eat a ton of stuff that some people will say I probably shouldn’t. My wife refuses to drink milk or eat yogurt (!) a single day after the date on the package. I totally do the sniff test on meat. The clincher is that ever since I was a little kid brown-bagging my lunch to school, I’d take lunchmeat, with various condiments, or leftovers of whatever type, to eat after sitting unrefrigerated all day. Cold packs are a pain in the ass. I’ve taken the “risk” of eating unrefrigerated perishables almost every day of my life since grade school. And I tend not to get sick, in any form, really. I exercise my immune system just like the rest of my body.
I did have a brief experience with CA-MRSA that was kind of scary, though…
The technical term for this illness is a “hangover.” I experience it constantly, despite sterilizing everything I eat in a strong solution of grain alcohol.
Bad bacon is like going down on a Turkish hooker. In summer.