BUT THEY ASSURED ME THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: The Bacon Paradox.

In 1998, three scientists won the Nobel Prize for discovering a molecule that saves lives. It relaxes blood vessels. It lowers pressure. It prevents heart attacks. It is called Nitric Oxide. The primary raw material for this miracle molecule is the very thing we have spent fifty years trying to banish from our breakfast tables. We are running away from the cure because we have confused it with the poison.

Here is the inconvenient fact that the “clean eating” lobby forgets to mention. Vegetables love nitrates. They soak them up from the soil like a sponge.

Beetroot. Rocket. Spinach. And yes, celery. These are the nitrate heavyweights. A 100g serving of rocket contains more nitrates than 5 kgs of bacon or hotdogs. If nitrates were truly the toxic assassin we are told they are, a salad would be a suicide note.

Yet, nobody is protesting against spinach (which has twice the level of rocket). We consider these vegetables “superfoods.” We blend them. We drink them. We feed them to our children.

So why is the nitrate in a bacon sarny a killer, but the nitrate in a beetroot a hero?

Read the whole thing — and hands off my bacon.