US bacon prices are rising after a deadly virus spreads through farms killing millions of piglets. A pound of bacon averaged $5.46 a few months ago. "That's 13 percent more than a year ago."
This is also being reported by The CS Monitor and CBS.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by lcklspckl on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:50AM
Because there is virtually no food that bacon can't make better.
(Score: 3, Informative) by keplr on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:46AM
As a vegetarian, I object. There is no food bacon cannot render inedible*.
*according to my pretentious and hyper-vigilant health-focused masochistically restrictive diet.
I actually am vegetarian, and I do think it's a superior moral choice, but I do still have a sense of humor about it. Like mortality, there's no way to get by in life without being able to laugh about it.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:50PM
Two other points worth raising against bacon:
1. Bacon definitely isn't kosher or halal. That's especially important to some people this week due to Passover.
2. Bacon has many adverse health effects (obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]), particularly on the circulatory system.
Yes, bacon is tasty, but I wouldn't mind terribly if it became a rare treat rather than an everyday staple. It's not like there are other kinds of food that are also quite tasty and are less likely to give you a heart attack.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by hatta on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:55PM
The key is to find the sweet spot. If you eat bacon too rapidly, it will shorten your life reducing the time you have to eat bacon. If you eat bacon too slowly, you'll live longer but who cares if you're not eating bacon? What's the optimal rate to consume bacon to maximize the amount of bacon consumed?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @08:23AM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Tuesday April 15 2014, @08:43AM
Even bacon can be made better with bacon!
I challenge you to make your own! [amazon.com] You'll discover that what you call bacon now is just chicken scraps. It's easy, the results are amazing, freezes well, if you buy smart it's not even particularly expensive. So satisfying. I have a Kamado but I prefer it not smoked.
And Berkshire pigs are the best. They're better than the American ones that eat cherries and chestnuts, they're better than the Italian ones that eat Parmesan whey,and better than the Spanish ones that eat acorns. Kurobuta doesn't count because they're Berkshire.
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:58AM
Coffee is up about 100% in the last 6 months too. Fortunately (perhaps) for consumers, the actual coffee is a small part of what you pay for when you buy a cup or bag of it.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2, Informative) by N3Roaster on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:57AM
Note that's the C market price. Most people in the coffee business wouldn't want to buy on the C market and the prices will usually but not always be C plus (or minus) a derivative that's negotiated far enough in advance that true costs aren't nearly as volatile as you might think from looking at the commodities market. That's a bit of a simplification, but nobody who knows what they're doing is likely to actually be paying twice as much for coffee as they were half a year ago.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:03PM
I know I've not seen coffee prices change at all in the contexts where I buy coffee (cafes & bars) - you'd expect real price changes of that magnitude to have trickled through the system in that period of time.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:52PM
My favorite story about commodities trading gone horribly wrong:
Special Delivery [thedailywtf.com]
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by N3Roaster on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:41PM
The 2011 prices that you mentioned in another comment have a lot to do with wholesale/retail/cup pricing. Retail prices were eventually increased back then and when market prices went down the retail prices didn't. Generally roasters try to keep prices for their customers pretty stable so sometimes we absorb market increases and sometimes we take a little more profit.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 15 2014, @08:49AM
OK, that was cheeky, but it was also a serious question. I know that demand for Kopi Lewak has exploded due to these tossers, so much so that there's now both an amoral battery-farming-like industry surrounding supply, and also that there's lots and lots of fake Kopi out there. (And being taste-wankery like wine, the self-called experts can't taste the difference, so they get away with it.) Why would you sell your shitty coffee (no pun intended) at a normal price, when you can relabel it as Kopi and sell it at an inflated price?
OK, that's flamebait. However, to receive a downmod would make me enormously happy, as it would confirm that at least one hipster has seen how much he's detested.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by N3Roaster on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:53AM
Despite what those who benefit from selling it (real or not) and journalists who lazily confuse a press release with a story every couple years would have you think, the market for overpriced processed poop is an insignificantly tiny portion of the overall market. It doesn't affect C basis pricing.
There is a long term trend for an increasing portion of demand to be for coffee that is better than exchange grade. Here there are objective standards and experts throughout the world are consistently and reliably classifying the coffee. At the high end there are Q graders who, as part of maintaining that designation, periodically calibrate. If you send a sample to a few different Q graders in different parts of the world the results of their evaluation will be very close to each other. But this long term trend is something that has been going on for decades and there hasn't really been a change there which would account for this sort of short term change.
More likely this short term change is the result of the market noticing that coffee rust disease is a real problem. This hit a lot of farms in the Americas recently. The market reaction wasn't immediate because the immediate effect of that is a larger than normal proportion of available coffee being lower quality (farmers needed to either harvest unripe fruit or not harvest anything and there's a market for poor quality coffee so you take the money you can) and there was the expectation that Brazil would have enough coffee to make up the difference in availability. But coffee rust disease is a long term problem. Coffee is not a crop that you plant every season and then harvest what you planted. It takes years for newly planted trees to reach peak production. Supply and demand, like you note, but the issue right now is on the supply side and it's a real problem that's causing a lot of financial pain on the production side, not some greedy producers making bank off fools.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:50PM
My layman's understanding is weather has affected the Brazillian crop, and thus it's a supply side issue. Although I suppose the weather might be the fault of the hipsters.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:07PM
However, is this increase just correcting the price after massive decreases in previous years? It's still nowhere near 2011 prices, for example.
http://spendmatters.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/201
(And yes, I'll blame those prices on the 2011 hipster boom!)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by Solaarius on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:13AM
Half the internet is going to get more expensive. What next? Price rise on kittehs?!!?!11?
(Score: 4, Funny) by davester666 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:46AM
no, they are still free. just head down to the local river/lake and pull a burlap sack or two back to shore.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:34AM
Next? Weev's in for a surprise [arstechnica.com]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:19PM
Well, it certainly explains why this site went back from Bacon to Soylent. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tomp on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:16AM
Am I the only one that doesn't really care for bacon? At its best, it adds salt and smoke. Typically though, even those flavors are dulled by the fat. Rendered salt pork does a better job. I *know* I'm missing something. Everyone else can't be wrong. What is it? Is bacon really that magical?
Should I be ashamed that I like the baked potato more than the bacon bits on top?
(Score: 1) by soylentsandor on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:25AM
Nah, you'll probably be healthier for it. You are weird though ;^>
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Moru on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:08AM
I just stopped buying bacon about 20 years ago. No reason, just wasn't into meat that much. Then one day I thought I would eat a dish with fried bacon because it was so long ago. Was happily frying them and sat down with my wife and ate. After the first bite we looked at each other, it all tasted like old meat that was past the date by a long way. Looking at the package, the date is far into the future so it can't be that. Well, we tried a few more packages over the year and all tasted the same. The bacon in the hamburger from the local hamburger-place had the same taste, as all other restaurants.
A few years later we have our vacation in Germany and there we also try some bacon, this time from a local butchery with locally produced things. Here it tastes just fine, none of that old taste. When we are home again, we notice that on all packages of bacon it says "smoke-aroma". I look up what this is and it turns out to be ashes of burned wood mixed with water. Could it be this that gives the bad taste? Anyone else having this problem?
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:36PM
yup - you hit the problem. Most Bacon on the market these days wasnt cured properly, nor smoked. Why? because most people cant tell the difference, they use cheaper processes.
If you want good bacon; you have to spend a bit more money and buy better bacon. find a local butcher who processes his own bacon.
Find a butcher who will sell you the uncured pork belly (sliced) and use a smoker and you can have a plate of heaven.
(see also Good Eats, episode 505 "Scrap Iron Chef: Bacon Challenge") or Good Eats episode 702, for how to make a DIY ceramic slow smoker)
(Score: 1) by MrNemesis on Tuesday April 15 2014, @02:17PM
I'm lucky enough to live a stones throw away from a local family butcher that's been in business since the 1860's. They're wildly popular locally and deliver free to your door for orders over 25 quid within a two mile radius - which is handy since going there at busy times will likely get you at the back of a 20-person queue. Going there a couple of days before christmas will get you a 50-100 person queue.
Their bacon, and indeed their meat in general, is vastly, vastly superior to anything you can find in the supermarket. The only downside is the cost - the butcher is about 10-15% cheaper than the supermarkets as well; thinking about why this is so makes my head hurt. But a roast pheasant with some venison and juniper stuffing soon makes me forget about that.
One thing that I've learned about bacon in the US is that they only really use what we brits call "streaky" bacon - that's the belly cut. The SO had to explain to some american tourists in her hotel (doing the traditional english breakfast thing) about back bacon (i.e. cuts from the back) - they'd never seen it before and happily proclaimed it delicious. It's much less fatty and IMHO is a far better recipient for smoking.
The dreck the supermarkets churn out is practically inedible - too much salt and what looks like a half pint of water oozing out of it when you cook it.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:00PM
And "back bacon" prepared with proper smoke and salt will taste even better than "streaky" bacon.
Unfortunately If I want the good stuff today I have to make a drive out of the way, and get there during "bankers" hours. terribly inconvenient. years ago I could have walked to a local butcher. (that is not progress.)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:37PM
One thing is most people pan fry their bacon too.
Pan fry seems to burn the bacon easily. Most meats come out better cooked if cooked slowly. It also tends to make the bacon taste old and give it a rancid taste.
I recently went to the 20 min baking method. The taste is amazing from the exact same starting point of materials. In fact my wife has declared "we will not pan fry again". I showed it to my parents and they instantly converted to this method as well. Cleanup is also a snap as I just wad up the fat on the tinfoil and toss it instead of cups of boiling grease. One other tip is eat it within a day or two of buying it. Do not keep it for a few weeks... It may be ok to eat but the taste is better the sooner you cook it.
Look for 'sugar cured' and avoid hickory smoked if you do not like that taste. I personally like it. If you want no additives you will probably have to stick to a butcher.
What chaps my ass is the way they hide the fat in the packages with a small streak of meat on the top. The kind of bacon we have in the US should have a bit of fat, but come on... I have been buying thicker cuts and ones where you can actually see how much meat is in them. Some people like more fat. I want more meat as I like the taste. I would say 80/20 meat/fat ratio. The cheaper brands flip that around as they can sell the meat as other more expensive cuts. I have been buying a brand where they do not put it in a cardboard box and hide the look. It comes in a block and you can see what they did. Typically it is 'thick sliced' they package it that way so you can see the 'thick slices'.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:26AM
Some people just don't like smoked pig. I'm definitely not one of them, but I won't judge you.
Try pancetta. It's bacon without the smoke, basically. You use it the same way you'd use bacon.
(Score: 1) by lcklspckl on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:28AM
There is nothing wrong with you! Salt pork and lima beans or navy bean soup. Mm hm.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Tork on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:29AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by lcklspckl on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:39AM
If I only had mod points! And hadn't posted. (+1 Funny)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:44AM
Years ago we hosted a camp for artists. We hired the best vegan chef around for a week of meals.
On one hand the food was nothing short of amazing. People loved it - even the carnivores.
One the other hand, after the first couple of days the entire population became walking, talking, non-stop methane generators.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:50PM
If you eat beans regularly, your gut bacteria will adjust and no longer become a methane factory. Ditto for soy in all its variants (tofu, seitan, tempeh, texturized vegetable protein, etc).
But you're right that a lot of vegan food is stuff you actually want to eat, like:
- Vegetable stir fry with rice.
- Black bean burrito with whatever veggies and chiles you want to put in.
- Chana masala, and a lot of other Indian dishes.
- Vegetable sushi (added bonus: Less mercury!)
- Miso soup
- Toast with peanut butter or jam.
- Baked potatoes with chives. Also, oven fries.
- Popcorn
- Falafel, possibly with pita and hummus.
Any vegan that's trying to live on unpalatable garbage is doing it wrong.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:11PM
You're right about "Any vegan that's trying to live on unpalatable garbage is doing it wrong.", but the difficult part is getting a full balanced selection of amino acids. Methionine (IIRC) is the really difficult one. Possibly it was Isolucine. I can't remember what I did to solve that, as my wife got bored with the diet.
If you don't worry about amino acid balance you'll regret it after a few months. They call them "essential amino acids" for a reason.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:40PM
Methionine - sesame, brazil nuts, oats (granola, oatmeal, etc), some processed soy, peanuts, chickpeas, and a bunch of other places. Of the meals I listed, chana masala, hummus, and peanut butter all work well.
Isoleucine - lettuce, kale, peas, bok choi, tofu, spinach, and a bunch of other places. Also known as "eat a green salad".
They're both very possible to get with plant-based diets. For the record, I'm not vegan myself, just vegetarian, so I get a lot of this kind of thing from dairy, but my vegan friends do just fine if they're reasonably smart about it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:21PM
You should have harvested it and done something for the climate! ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:11AM
Was that post sent from an iPhone at a Starbucks hot spot? If (no) then hipster = fail (!)
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:08PM
I can one-up you. I avoid eating anything, yes including plants, that completely died.
I'll eat fruit, nuts, seeds, etc, but nothing that kills the whole plant.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:13PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:14PM
Voltaire would (probably) approve of your diet. In a rather satirical way.
As with the other post, I question that this is an improved morality as you are eating nuts and seeds. (I also question how seriously I should take your post, as after a few months on that diet you would start to get rather sick.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:23AM
Once I had low-salt, or better yet sugar-cured bacon, I was ruined -- I didn't like regular bacon anymore either. The low-salt stuff is so good, I buy it (when I can find it) just to make bacon grease to use on toast and rice. Mmmmm....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by stderr on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:16AM
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:27AM
Yes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:01PM
"At its best, it adds salt and smoke."
Adds some texture too, assuming its properly cooked beyond the fatty rubber stage but before the incineration stage. Also the best "added bacon" dishes usually are a little fat deficient (better when added to a dry baked potato than a greasy stove top fried hamburger, for example)
Try some very crisp bacon dipped half way in melted dark chocolate and then frozen. Of course chocolate is not exactly fat deficient, but this still tastes pretty good. This is not exactly the paleo-like diet I usually aspire to, but if you're going to do something naughty, at least make it taste great. Don't waste your dietary naughtiness budget on McDonalds or frozen yoghurt or whatever.
Another fun flavor combination is lightly smoked bacon baked with maple syrup in the oven. Maple bacon tastes better than hickory bacon.
And now I'm getting hungry.
(Score: 1) by monster on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:20PM
Hey! No badmouthing of frozen yoghurt please.
I do my own frozen yoghurt (whole process, from milk to ice cream) and it puts the industrial counterpart to its knees. The industrial frozen yoghurt usually has too much sugar and too little fruit. Even more, homemade yoghurt can have very few calories if made with milk stripped of its fat.
As for bacon, since I have rural ties I've made bacon many times (whole process, also, from pig to lunch) along with other meat parts. Tastes great but I seldom eat it because of the fat.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:10PM
Well, OK. At the time I was thinking of the stereotypical franchise entrepreneur yogurt shop where its a cup of yogurt in the bottom of a cup and then two cup fulls of chocolate syrup, brownie pieces, crumbled cookies, M+Ms, caramel sauce, strawberry sauce, candy sprinkles, chocolate chips, and three cherries on top, that sort of commercial establishment. Its a local (nationwide?) fad, same locations and people and customers did the cupcake shop scene a couple years go. I believe the secret sauce in the biz model is junk food dressed up as healthy food.
I stand corrected that it is possible to consume frozen yogurt without one part yogurt and two parts mix ins.
(Score: 2) by Skarjak on Tuesday April 15 2014, @02:44PM
You're not missing anything. The internet decided that bacon was amazing the same day it decided cats were the best animals on Earth. The only issue is that the joke is now a few years old.
Personally, I enjoy having bacon a few times per year, but I'd like not to die from a heart attack.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:21AM
Let's face it, do you really NEED bacon? For that matter, do you really need to eat meat? You can get all that protein from other sources. Having said that, I don't eat bacon because I don't want all that fat but I love a good pork steak. Those are even better than pork chops. Why pork chops are preferred to pork steaks I'll never understand. Pork steaks are cheaper too. And pork tastes better than beef. Oink! Oink!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Marneus68 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:46AM
We need a bacon category and icon.
bacon++ if you agree.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:11PM
while (--bacon);
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:33PM
SOYLENT NEWS ...is people and bacon?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @09:18AM
Gathered around the large conference table at the National Meeting of the Pork Producers Assocation, the executives looked grim.
"Bacon," intoned the leader, "is on the way out. The high sodium and high fat content make it unattractive to people in our target demographic. If we don't do something soon--why, look at what happened to beef jerky?"
"Oh no!" came the reply, "We MUST do something!"
"How about using the so-called 'internet?' We could figure out a way to persuade people that bacon is really hip and awesome--you know, get a bunch of these nerdy kids to think it's cool? Let's bombard everyone with social media, a few fansites, T.V. shows, movies--you know, the whole drill?"
"Done! Let's go golfing!" ...TO BE CONTINUED
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:12PM
The article doesn't mention it, but I'm pretty sure the virus is Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcine_epidemic_di arrhea_virus [wikipedia.org]). The virus does not cause disease in humans and the virus wouldn't stand a chance at surviving through cooking, since it has a lipid membrane.
For those of you that are interested, it belongs to the same family as SARS and MERS which are among the largest RNA viruses.
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:28PM
Where will I get my news!?!?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kbahey on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:54PM
This news item is an ongoing conspiracy by the ruling cabal to rename SoylentNews as BaconNews. Their sinister motives were divulged first as an April Fool joke, and now this ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].