In the UK, we mostly eat back bacon rather than the streaky bacon which predominates in the US, and it is usually packaged like this:<p><a href="https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.j...</a><p>There's no artful hiding, but the label covers the fatty tail.<p>Sometimes, fancy bacon is shingle-packed, but the top isn't covered:<p><a href="https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.j...</a><p>Even if it's streaky:<p><a href="https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.j...</a><p>I'd be interested to know if this is because of UK (or EU!) food packaging regulations, or if it's just local custom.
Two things I find fascinating here:<p>1. People obviously know bacon is fatty, and buy it exactly for it, but still somehow hiding that fact seems beneficial. Moreover, it looks like at the base of this fact lies the anti-fat stance which now has been proven to have rather weak factual basis. I.e. we have a marketing trick counter-acting the effect of the bad propaganda.<p>2. The government-mandated rear window is an example of a regulation that solves non-existing problem (if people didn't want fat they wouldn't buy bacon) by ineffective means (people that are so naive as to not know bacon is fatty surely wouldn't also know to look for that back window - how often you actually turn over the packages you buy in the supermarket?). Yet a lot of educated well-paid people are working tirelessly at implementing and supervising such regulation and they persist for years. Because otherwise what would happen? We would never know bacon has fat!
This article doesn't address why they do it. There's a quote from an ad a few decades ago, but the article doesn't answer the question. Interesting read nonetheless.
When plastic contamination in food was a big deal a few years ago I switched to the stacked pack bacon or buying it straight from the butcher. I always liked mine a little crunchy anyway, but I didn't know the meaty bacon could taste just as good or better than the stuff I was raised on. Now I can't go back.<p>I've had what England calls bacon and it just looks and tastes like a good boneless pork chop sliced like lunch meat. If I want that I'll have the poor chop and a dash of spices (have you tried lemon pepper or chili powder on a pork chop?)
In Ukraine people like to eat salted raw pork fat called 'salo', and of course no one tries to hide its appearance. It looks like this: <a href="http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0abba_orig" rel="nofollow">http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0...</a>