The allure of bacon is often the last hurdle for meat eaters considering vegetarianism (though, as many a vegetarian will tell you, the bacon cravings remain long after you give up flesh). So it’s perhaps no surprise that faux-meat company Beyond Meat, after turning meatless burger patties, ground beef, and sausage into a market valuation of $12 billion, has set its sights on bacon next.
A plant-based substitute for bacon is currently in development, Bloomberg first reported on Wednesday. (In an email, a Beyond Meat spokesperson told Eater that “some of the more complex meats” — such as bacon and steak — are potential targets for building out the company’s portfolio of alternative meats.) Beyond Meat has not shared when it plans to bring its fake bacon to market — CEO Ethan Brown told CNN that the company’s research team would need a “surprise breakthrough” to launch anytime soon — but whenever that day comes, it will mark a development in the national obsession with bacon that is as inevitable as the meat sweats.
Though it’s long been a popular breakfast staple, bacon’s thrall on American culture intensified in the aughts — its trendiness, once thought to be a natural response to the lean-protein-only diet crazes of the ‘80s and ‘90s, later revealed to be the work of careful machinations by the pork industry to lift pork belly back into public favor and consumption. Bacon’s grip has never really let up since. It is exalted to the point of fetishization, starring in grease-soaked fever dreams like Epic Meal Time’s TurBacon (turkey, filled and wrapped with bacon, stuffed inside a roast pig, and garnished with Wendy’s Baconators), and transcending its physical form and function in such novelty items as bacon toothpicks, bacon mints, and bacon soap.
The cult of bacon has always been performative in nature: its carefully calibrated everyman appeal, traversing the low end to the high; the meta awareness of escalating bacon mania and one-upmanship to create increasingly perverse concoctions; the impassioned pledges of fealty it elicits — often from men — each time a new study reports on the health risks of eating too much bacon and other processed red meats. Bacon, like red meat in general, carries inextricable associations with masculinity, from the gendered idiom “bring home the bacon,” to cheaply stereotypical ads like Taco Bell’s “Guys Love Bacon” commercial, to beloved characters in pop culture like Ron Swanson, the pinnacle of masculinity and the devourer of “all the bacon and eggs.”
The branding of the current plant-based meat boom, as framed through Beyond Meat and its competitor Impossible Foods, is not totally dissimilar. Both companies, currently locked in an arms race to stake their claims on grocery store shelves and fast-food chains across the U.S., are aiming to serve the masses. Neither companies’ products are health foods, really, but are highly processed with a lot of saturated fat and sodium.
There is also a shared embrace of the masculine: bacon, the fuel of prehistoric hunters, axe-slinging lumberjacks, and ; and “plant-based meat” (not “vegetarian,” mind you) that was once advertised using manly branding flourishes like “Beast Burger,” grill marks, and flames. One is classic red-meat masculinity. The other is tech bro masculinity, striving for a combination of enlightened science and primal craving.
The question is if these ideas will mesh neatly in a bacon that, should it come close enough to the real thing, would convince obstinate carnivores that it’s possible for them to enjoy food that wasn’t the result of slaughter. Or, conversely, if people who hang their identity on eating real meat will never allow themselves to waver.