Is a double bacon cheese burger a death sentence?

The news that bacon has been found to increase your risk of cancer make a double bacon cheese burger a death sentence. Well, it's not the healthiest sandwich on Earth.  Too many calories, which is a health risk.  A slice of "American" orange plastic cheese, which may not be bad for you, but eating it shows such poor judgment that you are probably making a lot of questionable health decisions. Grilled beef is both fatty and the grilling makes some sort of nasty stuff that also increases you risk of cancer. However, lots of things can increase your risk of cancer, the question is by how much? The answer in this case is bacon is not a big risk, unless you're eating piles of bacon, and then the fat will probably get you before the cancer. Bacon is not in the same league with smoking, and for those of us who only eat bacon every now and again, it doesn't figure to be a problem. Speaking of bacon one of the cooking magazines that just arrived had a wonderful sounding stuffed, roasted boneless turkey breast recipe that was completely wrapped in bacon. Sounds great and you'll be OK although the turkey did die, but it still wasn't the bacon. The fact that news organizations jumped all over the bacon-cancer news none of the articles TPP has seen so far offered any analysis of how great the risk was. No expert was interviewed and asked to explain. And that's what's wrong with science reporting these days. All they cared about was a sensationalist title, not providing any useful information. The cooking magazine by ignoring the warning altogether and publishing a bacon heavy recipe was more honest. 

Bacon improves everything, but not this time

The Phactor was doing some cooking today, a succotash salad for our monthly dinner group, a regular happening now for the past 32 years and counting. Seems like a nice recipe; basically succotash brightened up with lots of basil and arugula. But the recipe called for crispy bits of turkey bacon for a garnish. Now the reason for this is simple; many of our dinner group friends are of the Jewish faith. In fact at this particular gathering, it would appear the Phactor is the token gentile. Fair enough. No problem, after all hotdogs are made from lots of animals and their parts, and they all taste about the same, sort of a mediocre non-descriptness. Let's face it real sausage wins out everytime. But the reality of turkey bacon was much worse. Yikes! Beggin' Strips dog treats look better and more like real bacon than turkey bacon. OK, don't leap to premature judgements, so let's cook some, make a BLT for lunch and see what we think, but to judge things fairly, let's put real bacon on one half and turkey bacon on the other. There was no contest. Turkey bacon is as if a turkey went to a Halloween party in a soybean bacon bits costume! Now this brings up a metaphysical question. Remember the Parkay margarine-Mother Nature commercials? It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. So what does Yahweh think of phoney turkey bacon? He is after all a rather vengeful diety, so maybe it's not nice to fool him! Ah, now the Phactor gets it! The dodge aound the pork taboo is it's own punishment! That's just so Jewish.