What's Really in Cheap Grocery Store Bacon

Is expensive bacon really worth it? It's really confusing when you're shopping at the store for bacon because there's all these different types, all these different price points from $3.39 to $5 to $9 to $12 or even in some cases would you ever spend $283 for a pound of bacon? Well maybe you would if you understood the bacon from the pigs that I actually raised on my amazing farm which I'll get into the details a little bit later. When we're talking about the quality of bacon we have this commodity extremely cheap bacon. This is what's in most of the grocery stores. Yes you have a little bit of protein, you have a lot of fat. When a pig is born and weaned off its mother it's about 40 to 50 pounds then sent to the feed lot. This new home that this pig is going to live in has a square footage of about 7 to 7.2 square feet. That is the square footage of an average bathtub. It's kind of like you living in a closet. Now they're going to increase the weight of that pig to 250 to 300 pounds in three to four months. And the question is what are they feeding this poor animal? 30% of the feed is dent corn which is GMO. That means it's genetically modified and it has traces of glyphosate. Of course the other 70% is basically genetically modified corn and soy. Also things like ractopamine. This is a drug that is banned in 90 other countries and this is a way to ramp up the muscle on this animal in the last 20 days of its life. And what's really fascinating about these factory farms is that they have certain agricultural gag laws. There's laws against whistleblowers. You can't really reveal what's happening inside some of these farms. Very few people know that that bacon that they buy at the store for $3.33 comes from these factory farms. They don't really think about it. They don't really know about it. I don't want to support that. I want to support the small farmer that's really doing it right. That really cares about the animal's welfare. Now let's talk about the processing of bacon. There's always a smoke flavor with bacon and you might think that they're going to roast this pork but now they're actually going to add liquid smoke where they add this smoke flavoring to the pork. They add some salt water and sometimes sugar and MSG. Slice it up and stick it in the grocery store. Let's contrast that with pasture raised bacon. A really good example of a farmer that does it right. His name is John Arbuckle. John's farm is called Singing Pastures and I'm going to put a link down below because his salami and his meat sticks are off the charts. It takes a lot of work to do that. I've talked to him many times on the phone. I've gotten pictures of his farm and he'll put 20 pigs on an acre of land but then he rotates them to allow the grass to regenerate. We have a really good supportive system with the environment, the super healthy microbes that actually grow and support the plant and give the pig a much better nutrition profile. Plus they're out in the sun so they get a lot more vitamin D. The biggest thing is they get exercise freedom to walk around and navigate through the environment. Then you have these farms in Spain and Italy where these pigs live on acorns. These acorns are one of the best foods for pigs. In Europe they will cure their ham, ferment and enhance the flavor and the quality of the meat and that curing process could last like 36 months. Now let me shift gears to my little farm operation I have. I'm not selling food on my farm. It's just a hobby. I'm like a farmer wannabe. I'm actually not very skilled at it. I'm just learning how to do it because it's an interesting hobby for me. I have some pigs and I'm only talking about five pigs but those five pigs live on five acres. They get to run around and there's no antibiotics at all. The type of grains that I use are the best grains possible. It's organic, there's no soy, there's no corn. This grain is super expensive. $1,500 per thousand pounds of feed. I calculated the cost of one of my pigs and I was shocked because it was literally around $49,000 because this is over a course of several years of just feeding them and getting to the point where they're literally like 600 or 700 pounds. If I were to sell one pound of bacon from my pork without even making any profit, my cost is $283.33 per pound. No one in the right mind would spend that amount. I do not know how a small farmer can afford to raise pigs. This is why it's important to support the small farmer especially at the farmer's market and in other places online and personally my opinion is it's much better for your health. I want to shift gears to nitrates. Nitrates are a chemical to act as an antibacterial and even to enhance the taste a little bit. One of the problems with nitrates is when you add high heats, you can turn the nitrates into another form of nitrates which are cancer causing. There's a big difference between synthetic nitrates and the naturally occurring nitrates that are in certain vegetables like celery. When pork is smoked and you're allowing this to naturally occur with smoke, it actually adds a benefit to that pork. Pork has some of the highest B1 that you can get from any other animals. Pasture-raised pork also has vitamin D, trace minerals like selenium and zinc. Pork can be very nutrient dense. Over 50% of the fat in pork, I'm talking about lard fat, is a healthy thing. We used to cook with lard long ago. If that pork is raised in the right environment, you can use that lard in cooking and different recipes. Let me shift to the mistakes people make when they're cooking pork. The more overcooked that the meat is, the more the byproducts can be a carcinogen. It's very important when you're frying this bacon not to overdo it. One way is baking. Bake your bacon in the oven. Another way to do it is in an air fryer. Also, if you're frying bacon, if you add a little bit of water to the pan, it can help to reduce the overcooking and the burning effect. Another thing, if you're frying bacon, you can add a little bit of olive oil to the bottom part. You're adding more antioxidants from this extra virgin olive oil. Some other solutions to reduce some of the carcinogenic effect from, you know, frying bacon. You can actually add garlic and onions when you're frying the bacon. It can neutralize those carcinogens. The other thing is that when you have bacon, what are you eating with the bacon? Cheeseburger with a bun and eating with fries and stuff. That's really bad. If you eat your bacon like on a salad or with other things, at the same time, you can add some antioxidants to counter the effect of these nitrates that I talked about. What about microwaving bacon? I am very much against that. It produces this nasty chemical reaction. In fact, I'm leery about cooking any meats in a microwave. So in summary, definitely upgrade your bacon towards a more pasture-raised pork, and that way you can actually have a nutrient-dense food. Now that you know the truth about bacon, we now need to talk about eggs since they're the perfect combination and all the reasons why you need to be consuming more eggs on a regular basis. Out of all the important videos that I've done about food, this one is at the top of the list, and you're going to find out why. Watch it right now.