mykowebhnHow America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/16/well/eat/ultraprocessed-food-junk-history.html
This all has very big "uncured bacon" energy to me (if you didn't already know: there's no such thing; vendors of uncured bacon performatively drive the same chemical nitrite reaction using vegetable extracts). For example: yogurt becomes a UPF simply by dint of adding carrageenan, which is on the order of calling dashi a UPF because of the kombu.
It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all this: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems. It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.
We went through a similar thing with "pink slime" (transglutaminase preservation techniques).
Jamie Oliver's War on Nuggets
I only get the bacon that says "No nitrates, no nitrites"
If you're talking about American-style bacon, and it tastes like bacon, there's no such thing. They're just exploiting labeling rules by selecting very specific nitrite sources. Nitrites are what give bacon (and ham) its flavor.
<strike>This is before we get to the whole premise of avoiding nitrates. Would you eat a beet? That's a serving of industrial bacon's worth of nitrates right there.</strike>
Later
(Actually, super bad example, since the concern is nitrosamines which are formed in the presence of proteins. The point about the illegitimacy of nitrite-free bacon stands!)
I fucking hate beets.
For bacon, what do you think of these?
Applegate:
https://www.raleys.com/product/10400628/applegate-naturals-h...
Coleman:
https://www.raleys.com/product/103101180/coleman-natural-bac...
The Coleman bacon doesn't list ingredients. But the Applegate bacon lists celery powder because that is a source of nitrates. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celery_powder
The Coleman one is the one I usually get these days, I used to get the Applegate.