International Bacon Day

Bacon sizzles in the pan like applause, releasing a fragrance that can wake a teenager from a dead sleep. The sound and smell are almost as satisfying as the taste: a perfect balance of salt, smoke, fat and crunch. Humans have been curing pork belly since at least 1500 BCE, when the Chinese discovered that salting and smoking preserved meat and intensified its flavor. The Romans improved on the process, simmering cuts of pork with figs and wine. Medieval English peasants hung sides of bacon near their hearth, and the Church of Dunmow in Essex offered a side of bacon to any married man who could swear he hadn’t argued with his wife for a year and a day — the original “bringing home the bacon.” For centuries bacon referred to any kind of cured pork, but by the nineteenth century it mostly meant belly or back fat that had been salted and smoked. Industrialization made bacon affordable to the masses. In the United States, German immigrants introduced their methods of curing and smoking, and in 1883 Oscar F. Mayer began selling prepackaged bacon in Chicago. By the early twentieth century, bacon was an American breakfast staple, paired with eggs or layered on BLTs. Its reputation for indulgent decadence only grew.

International Bacon Day, observed on the Saturday before Labor Day, was born from the minds of a few college friends who loved bacon enough to want it to have its own holiday. The story goes that in 2004 three graduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder — Seth Rittenhouse, Evan Salim and Alexa Halford — declared that the unofficial end of summer deserved to be celebrated with bacon. Word of their idea spread across message boards and blogs; soon bacon aficionados everywhere were grilling, frying and candying bacon on the first Saturday of September. The holiday has since taken on a life of its own, embraced by restaurants, social media memes and communities of “baconarians.” It’s not affiliated with the Bacon Day created in 2000 in Massachusetts or the December Bacon Day celebrated by some; rather, International Bacon Day is all about reveling in bacon in the late‑summer sunshine.

Celebrating bacon can take many forms. Some people keep it classic: a breakfast of smoky strips alongside pancakes, or a BLT with thick‑cut bacon, heirloom tomatoes and crisp lettuce. Others get creative, wrapping bacon around dates stuffed with blue cheese, stirring bacon into brittle, or sprinkling crumbled bacon over maple ice cream. There are bacon‑infused bourbons for cocktail lovers, bacon‑wrapped hot dogs sold from Los Angeles street carts, and even chocolate bars studded with bacon bits. While the holiday invites indulgence, it can also be a reminder to seek out sustainably and humanely raised pork. Small‑scale farmers and heritage breeders raise pigs outdoors, feed them natural diets and cure bacon using traditional methods, resulting in meat that tastes richer and supports better animal welfare. As you bite into a strip of bacon on International Bacon Day, you’re tasting millennia of human ingenuity in preserving food and countless cultural traditions. Let the crisp, savory sweetness linger on your tongue, share a laugh with friends about bacon‑obsessed internet trends, and be grateful for a humble cut of pork that has inspired poems, T‑shirts and a holiday of its own.