Nutrition: Getting the Skinny on Bacon

If you ever go to San Francisco, you gotta check this place out!!

2 months ago, I went to the Sweet Maple Restaurant in San Francisco for my niece's graduation lunch and had the privilege of tasting their Millionaire's Bacon.  The stuff was delicious and the best bacon I had ever tasted...even better than the Honey Baked Ham apple-smoked bacon.

It was so good that I was compelled to get a hold of not one but two restaurant T-shirts.

This server hooked it up; 2 shirts for the price of one.  Hope I don't get this guy in trouble.

That occasion re-kindled my relationship with the meat-candy that has long had a bad rap for fat and cholesterol.  My bacon consumption has increased to approximately 3/4 pound (uncooked weight) per week and I use it as a moderate to low source of protein for my Ketogenic diet.
I thought it would be a good idea to see what bacon consumption PROS there are other than great taste so I Google-searched BENEFITS OF BACON CONSUMPTION and found the following pro-bacon sites: (click to access sites)

• Top 10 Reasons Bacon is Actually HEALTHY for you

• 10 Reasons to Eat MORE Bacon

• Surprising FACTS to why bacon is good for you

I looked over each of the websites, found some resounding bacon PROS, and did my own research to find out if their claims are supported.  The following is a list of some of their claims and the results of my research:

• Bacon has Choline, an essential nutrient that is categorized with the B-complex Vitamins.  It's necessary for normal membrane function.
• A 2003 article in the Journal of Nutrition listed bacon as a high Choline food source that has 1.25mg Choline per gram of bacon.  The food source with the highest Choline concentration was beef liver with 4.18mg Choline per gram.  This is a definite POSITIVE for bacon!
• Bacon has Omega-3's
  
• A December 2014 article in Food Science and Nutrition suggested that pigs fed diets high in Omega-3s had increased levels of Omega-3s in their tissue.  But in order to get this benefit, you have to purchase Omega-3 enriched bacon and as far as I know, there hasn't been any marketing to promote Omega-3 enriched pork.  I searched Omega-3 enriched bacon and found nothing.  Because of this, I rate their Omega-3 statement as SHADY.
• Bacon is high in vitamins and minerals
• The BaconToday.com website (the first one listed) mentioned that a serving of bacon has 65% of the recommended daily value (DV) of Thiamine, 47% Niacin, 38% B-12, and 36% DV of Zinc.  The information I found on an independent nutrition site (nutritiondata.self.com) said different.  Nutritiondata reported that a 4oz. serving of bacon has 28%  DV for Thiamine, 56% Niacin, 28% B-12, and 28% DV for Zinc; the values stated on this site were almost consistently lower than what was mentioned on the BaconToday website.  The lower values lead me to suspect that the authors performed a little nutritional inflation.  I consider their vitamin and mineral claims to be PARTLY SHADY.
• Bacon increases satiety
• I Google-searched the terms BACON and SATIETY and found a recent article in a 2012 issue of Obesity where the majority of 46 women were able to maintain lean body mass, control satiety, and lose weight on a high-protein diet that consisted of 40% pork products.  Bacon is pork, right? So I guess one could say that this study MODERATELY SUPPORTS bacon's ability to increase satiety.  
  

If you're like me and eat bacon primarily for the taste and texture, the inconsistencies presented won't change your mind on bacon.  At least you now know that you'll be contributing to better membrane function with all that Choline! (...we all could use a little extra Choline, right?)

And lastly, the health care provider in me is obligated to encourage you to moderate your consumption of this meat candy; too much of a good thing can be really bad.

Happy eating,

DAVE