By the 1990s, the nation's fat-free dieting craze had damaged bacon's reputation, seemingly beyond repair as The National Pork Board advertised leaner pork cuts through its famous "The Other White Meat" campaign. Meanwhile, one nutritionist called bacon a "salty, nitrate-ridden, fat-laden carcinogenic thing" and a scientist called bacon "the most dangerous food in the supermarket."
Within a decade, bacon topped crazy concoctions like the Luther Burger, a bacon cheeseburger between two Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and appeared in television shows, like Parks & Rec. In this talk, Prof. Mark A. Johnson tells the history of bacon as one of the nation's most undesirable foods and how it became a twenty-first century culinary darling and pop culture symbol. In this talk, Johnson connects bacon to centuries of cultural change and the meaning of one of the world’s oldest foods in the modern age.
Mark A. Johnson, from Milwaukee, earned a PhD in history from the University of Alabama. Previously, he earned an MA from the University of Maryland and BA from Purdue University. He currently teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is the author of An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue: From Wood Pit to White Sauce and Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacle, 1877–1932.
Event details will be announced soon.
