One powerful example of a massive fabricated trend is one that you're probably very familiar with, yet may not have any idea how it all started: bacon. In a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek, Sax outlines the bacon boom, starting from bacon's lonely existence as the side to eggs and the crumble in Cobb salad to the low-fat craze of the 1980s that caused pork belly prices to bottom out. When consumers weren't buying bacon, the pork industry turned to fast-food restaurants, and the bacon cheeseburger was born. Now, it's ubiquitous: bacon appears on more than two-thirds of American restaurant menus and the price has gone from under $0.30 per pound in 1989 to $5.40 today. “In terms of economic impact, nothing beats bacon,” says Sax. In the video embedded above, filmed at our Toronto office, he breaks down the trend for us.
In entertaining, eye-opening talks, Sax introduces us to the economic and cultural impact of what's on our plate and in our pantry. To book David Sax as a speaker, contact The Lavin Agency.