One of my least favorite things is one of society’s favorite foods: bacon. Growing up, I would dread the Saturday mornings when I woke up to the horrid smell of burning pig flesh. The rubbery taste, the wood-like texture, and the putrid, lingering smell triggers my anxiety just thinking about it. 

Even before I was vegetarian, bacon was on my blacklist. As a child, my parents would fry it to a smoked crisp, essentially burning the meat until it was borderline black. The smell made me nauseous, and I would trap myself in my room, hiding from the smoky haze spreading through the house. This burnt to a crisp bacon  scarred me for the rest of my days. There are other ways to cook it, of course, but at this point any smell of bacon disgusts me.“The way I cook my bacon is in the oven,” said security staff Ernest Whitehead.

“I have to have it cooked hard and crispy; to me it has a better flavor.” 

Oven cooked bacon still has its vices. The chewy, fatty texture and the tendency for it to have a greasier surface are just as vile to me as fried bacon.

No matter how it is cooked, the residual grease splatter it leaves on all of the surrounding surfaces is enough to bother me to no end. Although it can be wiped away, there will always remain a thin film of animal fat on the surface, attributing to a semi-permanent smell of bacon. Besides being prepared as a standalone dish, bacon is a common accompaniment to many foods, including baked beans and burgers; however, the taste ruins those foods, masking over the other flavors. It also decreases the quality of the food with its fatty contents.

Economics and Personal Finance teacher Rudy Van Oekel agrees with me.

“People say you can put bacon on anything and it’s good, but I don’t think so,” said Van Oekel. “I don’t like the taste or the texture, plus it’s not very healthy how much grease comes off that stuff.”

If you enjoy bacon, then more power to you, but nothing will ever change my feelings towards the food.