It’s hard NOT to love bacon – salty, fatty, crispy goodness that adds the type of satisfying flavor that most carnivores adore.

That’s why in the last few years, bacon or bacon flavoring has been added to everything from famous Portland Voodoo doughnuts, to vodka, to artisanal Belgian Style Candi Syrup.

Peak bacon may have arrived, however.

Photo courtesy Ethan Prater via flickr.

Bacon is essentially salted and cured pork belly, and due to a $4 billion annual industry, it is a big water hog.

Looking back to the 1980s, bacon essentially suffered a long and protracted period of unpopularity due to the rise of the low-fat, no-fat health industry (bacon is two-thirds fat).

Back then, bacon was pork non-grata, and pork producers struggled to get people to eat what they eventually had to call “the other white meat.”

Eventually though, sometime in the 1990’s, fast food producers saved bacon’s bacon by adding the fatty strips to their burgers. Bacon double cheeseburgers were everybody’s favorite (if secret) vice.

By the year 2000, pork’s fortunes had vastly improved, because the foodie industry had discovered a love of pork bellies.

Yet looking into the future, bacon, pork, and meat in general may get a bit less popular as clean water becomes more of an issue for humanity.

Just two strips of bacon has a water footprint (the total amounts of water used to bring a product to you) of 300 liters of water. A pound of pork uses up 756 gallons of water, second in thirstiness only to beef as far as the footprint of typical foods.

Bacon will never go completely away – if we as a society choose to raise and eat pigs, bacon is the tastiest use of the big pork belly.

In honor of bacon’s popularity, Nutcase art director David Kruger gives you his rendition of a bacon-celebrating helmet. Alas, this bacon weave will never see the light of production.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a hot and juicy helmet deal today, go to our Labor Day sale to see what we’ve cooked up in special pricing. Happy Bacon Day!