In a recent lecture at Ted, Michael Pollan posited the hilarious (and slightly terrifying) theory that, as an organism, corn might be using human beings as pawns in its strategy to take over the planet. A quick glance will illustrate how some form of corn is in just about everything on our supermarket shelves, leading one to the uneasy conclusion that Pollan might, in fact, be on to something. (Side note: Someone should absolutely make a horror movie about killer corn hellbent on world domination. You know, like The Birds. Call it "The Corn." I'd pay legal tender to see that one.) But I don't think it's corn we should be looking out for.

It's pigs.

Something happened in the last couple of years, a fundamental sea change in the public consciousness — some might call it the rise of a meme — in which all of a sudden, bacon is everywhere. It started with a sort of culinary tide shift, right about the time that the Bacon of the Month Club started gaining attention.  It's a no-brainer: Bacon — artisanal bacon in particular — is amazing.  Being in a club featuring something amazing is amazing, because you get to share with like-minded enthusiasts your passion for amazing things, like bacon.  Hence, Bacon of the Month Club.  QED.  From there, the smoked pork belly proliferation began in earnest, and soon we were finding bacon topping our martinis, infused in our vodkas, flavoring coffee, breath mints, toothpicks, lollypops, even inventively being used as a vessel for other food. People were using bacon in every course of a meal, including desserts of "pig candy" (i.e. bacon coated with caramelized brown sugar), and even chocolate-covered bacon, which I had the opportunity to sample, and it was close to what I imagine a crack high to be like — intensely wonderful, followed by a hard crash and serious worries about addiction and one's physical health.  Some things are just a little too good to not be evil.  In the fast food world, dozens of bacon-themed menu items arose, including Wendy's "Baconater" hamburger and Taco Bell's bacon club chalupa, advertised by a commercial in which a woman places the aforementioned chalupa in her purse in order to attract hunky dudes at a bar.  They flock to her almost instantaneously.  Then there was some big hullabaloo about Bacon Salt, which many people seemed to like, but which I officially call shenanigans on, owing to the fact that, get this: it's vegan friendly.  How does one go about making anything taste like bacon (much less a flavoring agent) without using bacon?  Or any animal product at all, for that matter.  And, dear Lord, why?  Believe you me, something gravely disturbing is going on in that test kitchen.  Be wary.

It wasn't long before that tide shift rose into a tsunami.

Not only was bacon omnipresent on the culinary scene, it snagged a trotter-hold as an item of popular culture, beginning with a dizzying array of bacon-themed websites (I Heart Bacon, Bacontarian, Rate the Bacon, Mr. Baconpants, Six Degrees of Bacon, The Bacon Show, Bacon Unwrapped, and so on and on...), after which arrived the onslaught of bacon kitsch.  Products on that particular market now include bacon air-fresheners, stickers and buttons, scarves, jewelry, bandages, a "What Would Bacon Do" deluxe glossy document folder, bacon tape, cause bracelets ("Bacon Strong"!), a "bacon dome lunchbox,"  gift wrap, dental floss (seems counterintuitive to me, but perhaps that's the idea), place mats, jellybeans, a bacon wallet (which I actually own), and, my personal favorite, a bendy action figure play-set featuring "Mr. Bacon vs. Monsieur Tofu."  I'm not entirely sure why they decided to make the tofu French, though it does seem somehow appropriate.  All of these can be appreciated as funny or ironic, and I get that.  But soon enough, people started going overboard.  Seriously, folks: no one is going to wear a bacon brassiere.  That's just plain wrong.

All of this leads me to wonder: what gives?  What is the philosophical underpinning of this recent and massive cultural fascination, this age of "Baconlightenment"?  Why now?

First, if you'll permit a double negative, it's worth noting that bacon has never not been awesome.  I don't care who you are, and I don't care how subjective personal tastes can be, all evidence points the inevitable, undeniable conclusion that bacon tastes great.  I even wrote in my previous column about how the delicious powers of bacon are so often instrumental in bringing certain vegetarians back into the meat-fold. So it's not the transcendently wonderful flavor of good bacon (and for a real treat, try wild boar bacon), that gave rise to our current bacon zeitgeist.  It must've been something else.  Something deeper than simple, gustatory joy.  Here's what I'm thinking:

Bacon is the ultimate contradiction.  As good as it tastes, given its unfortunate effect on an average person's blood pressure, cholesterol level and body mass index, it's equally as bad for your health.  When you eat bacon, you're forced into a dilemma, whether you realize it or not: Flavor or Health?  And in some cases, you can add blasphemy to the mix, too, if you happen to be Jewish or Muslim, religions which famously (and, for me, cruelly) proscribe pork, and also if you're a Hindu or Buddhist, in which case eating any animal is seen as a big karmic no-no.  That, and bacon, as is evidenced by the Bacon vs. Tofu action figure set, seems to be the ultimate anti-vegetarian food, a big thumb-in-your-eye at self-righteous, proselytizing vegans and vegetarians who get their personal validation by railing against the carnivore set.  Aside from it's magical flavor properties, bacon seems to be the most commonly indulgent of all meats, and potentially the most rebellious one, as well.  It all but begs people to declare: To hell with my diet and my health and my religion, and my animal-rights-activist friends.  Viva bacon!  All of this combines, like nitroglycerin and sawdust and soda ash, into something explosively compelling.  It's the bad boy of meats, and who can resist the bad boy?  Whether that fact is conscious or subconscious, people are picking up on it, and having fun with it.  Which is why, I'm guessing, we're now in the throes of our glorious, if strange, Bacon Renaissance.

So I now sit here, eagerly awaiting the next Michelangelo. 

Of bacon.

Scott Gold is the author of The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers (Broadway Books, 2008), a selection of which is featured in Best Food Writing 2008 (Da Capo Lifelong Books), and which you can find more about on his Web site . A New Orleans native, Gold now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He also enjoys many vegetables.

Bacon photographs via Flickr (Creative Commons) by bmann (CC); Peppysis (CC); el neato (CC); ex.libris (CC); zoomar (CC); shawnzam (CC); rick (CC); Dan4th (CC); “Shameless Carnivore” photograph by Ryan McVay/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.