Wake up and smell the bacon

I believe ice cream has magical properties—and when scooped into a pretty glass dish in big round spoonfuls and topped with homemade caramel sauce and savoured ever so slowly—moves me to write.

Despite the fact that my core temperature has plummeted from eating more than my share of vanilla—and that I can’t feel the tips of my fingers on the keyboard due to the frozen dairy phenomenon—I do believe I am inspired.

Of course, as Murphy’s Law would have it, my old cat “Millie” in calculating a jump into my lap while I sat at my desk, missed, and landed on the keyboard, and with one flick of a paw erased all the work I had done in the past half hour for this column.

I was just about to write about bacon, because as I now understand it—as of Monday, October 26, 2015, at approximately 7 a.m. as the world sat down to breakfast (or breakfast for supper)—we found out bacon is bad for us. Really? Who knew?

When was bacon ever good for us? Hot dog wieners and lunchmeat made the news today, too. Not good for us. Seriously?

We all know what hot dogs are made of. If you do not, look it up. And before October 26th, who out there believed bacon was good for you after what was left in the frying pan congealed into a solid off-white paste?

But bacon tastes good. So does ice cream. The occasional hot dog isn’t so bad either, especially when cooked on a stick over a bonfire. Not much compares actually.

Before October 26^th if I “Googled” bacon I’m pretty sure it would have garnered something other than “bacon cancer” as the first hit, but we’ll never know that now. Bacon’s reputation has been slaughtered.

Pig farmers are royally aflame (my alternate clean description for “ticked off”) at the news that pigs, “the other white meat,” are suddenly and abruptly associated with cancer. 

Beef farmers, are red in the face too, over claims of “hot dog” “lunchmeat” and “cancer” all being used in the same sentence.

I love bacon. I don’t eat it often but when I do, I choose the best I can afford and I enjoy it. Hot dogs sometimes make my list too, and I would still rather eat bacon than smoke one cigarette.

I have two daughters who smoke and have for years. I wish they’d quit. 

They will roll their eyes when they read this because they are well acquainted with my stance on cigarette smoking. 

I want them to live to be healthy little old ladies in rocking chairs watching their great grandchildren play. Chances are good they won’t get the chance if they don’t make good choices with their bad habits. Sorry girls.  

  

I wish for the sake of all our children—who inhale far more nicotine into those lovely fresh young lungs than they will ever eat in bacon and hot dogs—that the health organization would flood the media with enough of THAT travesty in one day’s fell swoop to crash the tobacco industry to the ground for good.

End of story.