On bacon dust....

I love Five Guys Burgers and Fries.  If you happen to be in a part of the country that doesn't have them then you don't know what you're missing.  The fries are the best I've probably ever had and are cut right there in the store.  When you go in they have a blackboard telling you where the potatoes come from.  They give you a very generous portion of fries too; a regular fry is enough for two people.  In addition to the great burgers and fries they give you free peanuts; I love a place that gives you free peanuts.

Something that is disturbing about Five Guy and every other burger joint these days though is the bacon.  I don't know what kind of advanced technology was deployed to do it, but the bacon is unbelievably thin.  So thin if fact that if you mash a piece of that bacon between your thumb and forefinger it turns into bacon dust.  We're not talking bacon dust the consistency of sand, we're talking bacon dust the consistency of talcum power.  In addition to advanced slicing technology, they would just about have to use some kind of advanced polymer to keep the bacon molecules together during the cooking process wouldn't they?  The technology that goes into creating that bacon is probably beyond my comprehension.

Now I know that the roast beef at Arby's is sliced at least as thinly as the bacon at any fast food establishment, but with roast beef you are getting a stack of meat, not just a slice.  Put a single slice of Arby's roast beef on a sandwich and see how satisfying that meal would be.  My guess is that like a meal at a Chinese buffet, you would be hungry again 30 minutes later.

The only way that they could possibly get bacon any thinner is to turn it into paste so that you can spread it.

Obviously they slice the bacon so thin to reduce their costs; I'm sure if they could cut a tomato like that they would already be doing it.  As we speak scientists in Geneva are probably working out the tomato slicing problem and will soon be introducing a method to cut them as thin as a piece of paper too.  And then of course the Chinese will be printing stuff on the bacon, making it like a fortune cookie.

Like I said, if you mash a piece of that bacon between your thumb and forefinger the resulting bacon dust is the consistency of talcum powder.  Does this bacon dust present a health concern?  Are we soon going to be hearing about fast food workers suffering from Bacon Lung?  What is the long term impact of being exposed to bacon dust?  Maybe it's just paranoia, but I swear that I breathed in some bacon dust during my last fast food visit and I haven't felt the same sense.