This is a little bit late to be preemptive, but that's OK. We are on the cusp of a bacon backlash. A couple of years ago, bacon began climbing the ladder of popular and trendy ingredients. Smoked, cured pork belly, already toppying many a sandwich and served alongside many an eg, began being used in new ways, incorporated into more dishes, even embedded into chocolate bars. Bacon is as trendy as trendy can be.

And trendy things suck. We're all nerds here, right? So we know, deep in our heart of hearts, that trendiness is never deserved. Trendiness is just the mass delusion of vast numbers of stupid people who, through mob psychology and their innate gullibleness, all decide to jump on the same bandwagon at the same time. Ugg boots. Paris Hilton. Some more recent example that I know nothing about because I am an old nerd who spends his time in the kitchen instead of following trends. And the Castor to trendiness' Pollux is the backlash.

The backlash is a trend in and of itself. It's an anti-trend, in which all the people who jumped on the bandwagon in the first place simultaneously decide to jump off the bandwagon because the bandwagon is too crowded and full of the wrong kind of people. But backlashes have a bonus component - the bitter rantings of people who hated it from the beginning, usually out of a misguided need to say "I told you so" to anyone within earshot once the backlash starts.

Bacon is trendy. Ergo, there will be a bacon backlash. There may already be one. I urge you to reject that backlash, because bacon never asked to be popular. Bacon never asked to be put in chocolate bars or added to mayonnaise or dipped into vodka. Bacon never asked to be impersonated by liquid smoke, or worse, chemically processed imitation liquid smoke. Bacon only wants two things. Bacon wants you to love it, and bacon wants to love you back by hugging your heart until it explodes.

Me, I think that the ascendance of bacon is proof that in certain, small niche areas of American society, we still have a meritocracy. Sure, we take that meritocracy way too far, substituting the image of the thing that earned our love for the thing itself, but we can't help that. We're Americans. We reduce art to catch-phrases, and we reduce bacon to "bacon". But this is not bacon's fault, and we should not abandon it, no matter how irritated we are by the excess surrounding it.

Why? Because bacon works. Bacon is the iPod of the food world. You may despise the ads with the dancing silhouettes. You may rage against the douchebags sporting their white earbuds. You may blow your fucking lid at the apparent need to incorporate an iPod dock into every piece of consumer electronics being produced today. But you still want an iPod, and when you have it, you love it. Bacon works. 

Bacon works because even mediocre bacon consists of two hellishly powerful flavors and two similarly endowed textures. Satlry, smoky, chewy, crispy. Any one of these things hits your palate like a freight train, and even the bacon you get on a burger at Burger King has some of all four. Upgraede to really good bacon, and theuggernaut picks up steam - porkiness, sweetness, umami, unctous fattiness. There are entire three-course meals with less going on in them than one slice of great bacon. 

One of the great things about bacon is that even mediocre, agribusiness bacon, the kind you'd get, say, on a Wendy's burger, is pretty damn good. I think this is because bacon is one of the earliest forms of processed food. They can find more efficient ways to cure it, and build giant factories in which to smoke it, but even so, it's still gonna be cured and smoked. Plus, that huge flavor infusion means that even if it's a factory farm pig, it'll still taste OK. Not as good as truly great bacon, but a hell of a lot better than a grilled chicken breast.

Plus, bacon has a magical appeal to food nerds. Food nerds already elevate pork to near godlike status, and for good reason. Bacon can be used on its own, or as a condiment, or as a seasoning. The rendered fat can be used as a cooking medium or an ingredient. It's versatile, it can be organic and local and artisanal, and if you're really ambitious, you can try making it yourself.

So don't hate bacon because it's beautiful. Love it. Just don't, you know. Stalk it. You don't need bacon at Taco Bell. There's nothing at Taco Bell that needs to have bacon on it. Don't put bacon in everything, on everything, or wrap it around everything. Treat it with respect, and it will reward you mightily. And when the haters come by to scoff at you for still eating bacon while everyone else has moved on to the next big food thing, pity them, because deep in their hearts, they know what they're missing.