From kuro5hin: How bacon has made its way into ubiquity in our culture. It’s true: over the last ten years, it is becoming impossible to visit a chain restaurant and avoid dishes that have bacon in them. Bacon on salads. In soups. On potatoes. On burgers. I like bacon OK, but for crying out loud, does it have to be put on everything? At this rate, there will be bacon milkshakes. Egad.

For some reason, I first started noticing this back in college, when Rock-Ola Café started adding bacon to (seemingly) everything in their menu. Plus, at the time when Michelle and I started going out, she was a vegetarian. She noticed that plenty of dishes that would be able to be consumed by a vegetarian were contaminated with bacon. Michelle and I have since dubbed Rock-Ola the “bacon Mecca” and refuse to eat there. Not because of the overabundance of bacon, per se… the service just plain stinks as well.

Almost wholly unrelated: when I was a child (yes, only 20 years ago), Coca-Cola used to be dispensed solely in 12 oz. bottles and cans. Back when Coca-Cola was invented (and through much of your parents and grandparents years), Coca-Cola was dispensed in 6 oz. and 8 oz. measures. Today, you can buy “individual servings” of Coca-Cola and other sugary badness in one liter bottles. Sure, the nutrition labels on the side admit that the one liter bottles are actually several servings. And yes, the company states in their Product FAQ that a single serving size of Coca-Cola (8 oz.), contains the same amount of calories as orange, apple or grape juice. All this while failing to mention that the “fruit” juices (which are no friend to nutrition, either — most of them are sugar water, as well), unlike Coca-Cola, have some nutritional value (i.e. vitamins). And all this, while pushing everyone to have five servings of cola per sitting.

The Onion has even made a few great jokes about this phenomenon. I also find this User Friendly comic quite amusing.