Science/Tech

Bacon Makes Everything Tastier, Math Shows

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Oct 29, 2013 02:45 PM EDT

Everything tastes better with bacon... well almost everything. A new mathematical analysis reveals that dishes with bacon are tastier than those without.

After analyzing 50,000 recipes and 906,539 comments on them, researchers at Wired Magazine and Food Network the majority of dishes get a boost in ratings when bacon was added.

"First, we searched out all the recipes that fit a certain description - sandwiches, for example," reporter Cliff Kuang wrote in Wired magazine.

"Then, we calculated the average rating for those foods if they did not include the word 'bacon,'" Kuang wrote. "We ran the numbers again using only recipes that did include bacon. Of all the foods we analyzed, bacon lends the most improvement to sandwiches."
Researchers found that many of the foods analyzed in the study got a boost when bacon was added, and those with a few strips of bacon got better scores.

For instance, recipes with spinach and asparagus were all scored higher when they contained bacon.

So why is bacon so tasty? Scientists have previously pinpointed the exact chemical effect, called the Maillard reaction, which gives bacon its scrumptious taste. According to the Daily Mail, the reaction, which occurs when amino acids and sugars get heated together, releases a huge amount of smell and flavor that makes people salivate. 

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