I recently saw this Big Az Bacon Addict cheeseburger in a glass case in the gas station and found it troubling. America is currently in the throes of an obesity epidemic and this food is being marketed to addicts. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would not approve a whiskey called Booze Addict which purported to stop your delirium tremens. It has also been found unacceptable to market cigarettes to children, yet apparently it is totally fine to prey on people addicted to bacon.
I have noticed this phenomenon in a popular restaurant chain called Hamburger Habit. The name casts people who love burgers as junkies looking for a score. A habit is an unconsciously occurring repetitive behavior like smoking cigarettes. Smokers find themselves reaching for a butt without even knowing it. If you are doing this with hamburgers you have a real problem. It would be seen as uncouth to name a bar The Drinking Habit so I don’t see why this flies.
Fast food chains routinely search for gimmicks to make their food seem the most extreme. McDonald’s is injecting syrup in to their biscuits. Pizza Hut is stuffing their pizza crust with cheeseburgers and wrapping the crust in bacon. Wendy’s has something called a Triple Baconator, which you could read as the burger is literally adept at killing you when you realize The Terminator was an assassin. Carl’s Jr has a burger called El Diablo. The devil. KFC has the Double Down which is a disgusting sandwich concoction featuring two fried chicken breasts as buns with mayonnaise cheese and of course bacon in the middle. Let’s say you have high blood pressure. You’re not supposed to be eating fried chicken. Screw it let’s double down. You’re not going to live forever. Is KFC suggesting you irresponsibly gamble with your life?
The obsession with bacon in this country is trending somewhere between annoying and dangerous. For every stupid unoriginal hipster with a bacon tattoo there’s a fat guy who needs a seatbelt extension. Maybe it’s not a great thing to be worshiping. I firmly believe the younger generation cares more about bacon than world peace and could name more fast food chains than United States senators. Past generations fought racial inequality or protested the war in Vietnam. They stormed the beach in Normandy and fought corruption in Washington. These people care about bacon.
If you deconstruct a bacon cheeseburger, the bacon is the most unhealthy part. By weight it has the most salt, fat, cholesterol and nitrates of basically any food stuff. So we are taking one of the worst foods from a health standpoint and celebrating it for that very reason. Throughout his life anyone who ever met him has hated Donald Trump. At a certain point he decided to take pride in having a negative impact on society. This is what we are doing with bacon.
Hipsters have always celebrated things that aren’t good such as old cameras that barely work or bikes with only one gear. This is partly a ploy to cover up how poor they are but they’re also pricks who want to get your attention by being subversive.
The bacon craze is directly related to this nihilistic existence. It wouldn’t be considered cool to brag about drinking gallons of tequila or smoking three packs of cigarettes every day, but bacon gets a pass. Indeed I have seen disgusting fat asses confront others about their drinking habits while their bacon habit remains off limits. I’ve never heard of an intervention because someone’s getting way too fat. But why not? Isn’t that the leading cause of death in America? The terrorists want you to eat bacon.
If you’re an addict you need help. That goes for heroin and booze as well as bacon. The fact we’re being open about it doesn’t make it any better.