Global Bacon Shortage 'Unavoidable' 293
New submitter The name is Dave. Ja debuts on the front page with the most dismal news of our time: "This is truly 'Stuff That Matters'. Where would civilization be today without bacon? I don't mean to be alarmist but ... sound the alarms! This is big — it could lead to civil unrest."
Yes, a bacon shortage. Hopefully what bacon there is will be more delicious after being fed with gummi worms.
Before investing on lean hogs futures... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uh, no (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no. A lot of modern items are the result of clever marketing of previously unused material but bacon is not one of them: http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/baconhistory.htm [about.com]
Re:Ignorant Agricultural Question (Score:4, Informative)
Oo Ooh! I know!
(Caveat, I live right next to drought stricken corn fields)
The problem with the drought, is three-fold, and soil dryness is only one of them.
1) soil dryness. Irrigation helps in mild drought conditions to alleviate this.
2) prolonged air and soil dryness changes the specific heat of the air and soil. This causes normal solar isolescence to stop being gently warming and beneficial, to being glaring, and root scorching. Hot, dry soil and hot, dry air wither the corn crop even under CONTINOUOUS irrigation.
3) the change in ambient temperatures associated with droughts causes localized fronts to form over agricultural areas, which discourages rain. Even if it does rain in the upper atmosphere, it can completely evaporate before hitting the ground. In addition to that, the cells themselves actively diminish conditions required for rainfall.
Even blasting the ground 24/7 in the most horrible, water-table depleting fashion imaginable would not have saved this year's corn crop.
Re:Uh, no (Score:5, Informative)
chicken wings: used to be offal, good only for thickening soups/stocks; now buffalo wings are even simulated by using the "higher-quality" white meat.
skimmed milk: used to be thrown away or concentrated into whey solids. now also sold for the same price as real milk, while also selling the removed cream at a premium. possibly the greatest scam in culinary history.
nutria/coypu: a predictably failed attempt to market this nuisance rodent [wikipedia.org] as a food product.
canola oil (and some other vegetable oils): formerly only a lubricant, hydrogenated into margarine as a "healthier" butter replacement, which it turned out not to be. trivia fact: canola is a trademark for CANadian Oil, Low Acid; the real name is "rapeseed oil," or sometimes even "rape oil," changed for obvious reasons.
Re:Uh, no (Score:4, Informative)
First, Bacon is a byproduct of other pork products. It's the tough belly meat nobody wanted
What Americans call bacon, Aussies call "stringy bacon". It's called "stringy" because of the strings of fat in it, it's rubbish, it's only good for adding flavor to soups and stews. Short cut bacon (common here in Oz) is like lean ham, yes it comes from pork bellies but it won't clog your arteries like American bacon does.
This is what historians will call . . . (Score:2, Informative)
The "Aporkalypse" (or possibly "Hamageddon")