Look all this health craziness business is really quite tedious. The problem isn't bacon, but a model of consumption that has distorted the entire culture with its shameless excess; coupled with a sedentary lifestyle that most people, who are lazy, have not been able avoid under the impulse of modernity. Though rather than vilifying these things, its traditional food that takes all the bad wrap. At least the article recognizes the quantity aspect, without however addressing the personal responsibility in consumption and lifestyle issues. We moved from being peasants and workers, to sitting on our fat arses all day long, with automated transportation, while exponentially increasing our access to food in a century (this is what has been rather ironically been called “wellbeing”).
The devastating consequences to human health has simply been a foregone conclusion. As a society we went from being barely fed, or under fed, to overfed in a fortnight; while subscribing to an economic model based on conspicuous consumption and physical immobility, being that most people are addicted to their cars, that has caused an obesity epidemic and rampant coronary disease as well as other eating and lifestyle related illnesses. What this has done in causing healthcare costs to skyrocket alone is scandalous.
Of course there are a whole range of industrially produced foods, snacks, soft drinks etcetera that are best to avoid, but these aren't the same as traditional conserved food, that were once absolutely necessary for survival, like prosciutto, salamis, bacon, pancetta, lards, etc. I just think of all the beautiful cured meats of Norcia, or Tuscany!
One of my favorite pasta dishes is
rigatoni alla gricia eaten in the
trattorie of Rome, which is so simple (because a "poor man’s" plate that was meant to fill a hungry stomach, perhaps after a long day's work in the slaughterhouse of Testaccio or in the quarry along the Appia Antica - which one walked to every day religiously), yet delicious with only a few cheap ingredients as to be practically ridiculous:
rigatoni, olive oil, guanciale (a super fatty bacon from pig's cheek of Umbria and Lazio cured with lots of pepper and other spices), pecorino romano
cook the pasta in amply salted boiling water
sauté the sliced and cubed guanciale in a little olive oil making all the fat sweat out (other than bacon!) until the guanciale is crispy
add a little pasta water to the sauce just before the pasta is cooked, then drain the pasta and sauté it briefly into the sauce, turning to coat all well and evenly
plate the pasta and finish with a fair sprinkle of freshly crushed black pepper and a generous quantity of grated percorino romano
Voilà!
It's essential that the dish, though, use guanciale (or at the very least pancetta) and pecorino romano, otherwise it’s not the same. No, really, it aint the same! Bacon will not do!
PS: For anyone visiting Rome, go to Da Tonino on Via del Governo Vecchio for the
gricia. Tonino uses pancetta, but it's still outrageously good.
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