Bacon, pan-fried

Listed nutrients, per 100 g

For each nutrient, the value this page uses is marked “used”. A row marked “second database” is another database’s figure for a matching food, kept so you can see how far databases disagree (they can differ in the samples analysed, lab methods and rounding). Its own cells are worked out from it, but none of the page’s words or scores are.

Change the amount to rescale the first column. Nutrients a database doesn't list are missing, not zero.

Hazard rows as the dataset rates them

• Alpha-gal syndrome · Worth knowing · Flagged for people with alpha-gal syndrome: pork is mammalian meat, a trigger. The CDC advises stopping eating meat from mammals such as beef, pork, lamb, venison or rabbit. · US CDC, About alpha-gal syndrome · A
• Aluminum · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: EFSA's tolerable weekly intake for aluminium is 1 mg/kg body weight/week, 70,000 µg a week. Eaten alone, about 38,954 g a week would reach it. The figure is Health Canada's mean (1,797 µg/kg) for a blended ham-and-bacon composite as consumed, so it is a rough guide to bacon alone; the FDA elements summary gave no aluminium figure for bacon. · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · B
• Arsenic, all forms · Context · Context only (total arsenic; inorganic share not measured). · US FDA Total Diet Study (2018–2020) · A
• Cadmium · Nothing to watch: under the limit · A daily serving adds 0.14% to an average adult's cadmium intake (EFSA 2012 adult median, 1.77 µg/kg body weight/week; Canadian adults in 2007: 1.2-1.75), far from doubling it, so no cap. · US FDA Total Diet Study (2018–2020) · A
• Dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs · Worth knowing · Flagged: EFSA's 2026 tolerable weekly intake for dioxins and PCBs is 0.6 pg WHO 2022 toxic equivalents/kg body weight/week, 42 pg a week. The only occurrence figure is carried from raw pork cuts (CFIA 2014-2019, 129 samples, mean fat 14.1%), not bacon: eaten alone about 10,742 g a week would reach the limit at the lower bound (an upper bound on grams), 591 g a week at the upper bound of 0.07105 pg/g. Dioxins sit in fat and bacon is 35-43% fat, so a fat-scaled concentration would be higher; no conversion was made because no sourced factor exists. This is the weakest fit among the related meats. · CFIA dioxins survey (2014–2019) · B
• Charring compounds · Context · Context only (no agency reference value for heterocyclic amines (HCAs); IARC: high-temperature frying 'produces more of certain types of carcinogenic chemicals', with no change in risk established by cooking method). · IARC 2015 · B
• Lead · Nothing to watch: doesn’t double average intake · No cap: no safe level of lead is set; EFSA's 2010 reference point is a benchmark dose lower limit (BMDL01) of 0.5 µg/kg body weight/day. Judged by what a serving adds to the average adult's intake of 35 µg/day (EFSA 2012): one 15.0 g serving adds 0.03%, far under the doubling line. The FDA mean of 0.63 µg/kg (27 composites, 85.2% non-detects) is a lower bound. · US FDA Total Diet Study (2018–2020) · A
• N-nitrosamines · Not rated yet · Not rated: EFSA's 2023 reference point for NDEA, one of the N-nitrosamines, is a benchmark dose lower limit (BMDL10) of 10 µg/kg body weight/day, judged by a margin of exposure; there is no grams figure, and no mean was found to judge contribution to average intake. In 48 retail samples of cooked bacon (USDA), all results were under 15 ng/g, most under 1 ng/g. For illustration only, a 15.0 g serving at 15 ng/g of one nitrosamine is 0.225 µg, 0.0032 µg/kg body weight, a ratio of about 3,100 to the BMDL10; this is not a margin of exposure, which EFSA builds on total exposure across foods. · PubMed 26542769 · B
• Nickel · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: EFSA's 2020 tolerable daily intake for nickel is 13 µg/kg body weight/day, 910 µg a day for 70 kg. On the FDA value (6.9 µg/kg, a lower-bound mean), eaten alone about 131,884 g a day would reach it, an upper bound on the grams. On Health Canada's cured-pork mean (1,375 µg/kg, shared with ham) it would be 662 g a day. The two datasets differ about 200-fold and the cause is not established; 89% of FDA results fall below a reporting limit of 40 ppb, so the FDA mean rests on 3 detects and is a weak guide. · US FDA Total Diet Study (2018–2020) · A
• Nickel · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: shown beside the FDA figure, EFSA's 2020 tolerable daily intake for nickel is 13 µg/kg body weight/day, 910 µg a day for 70 kg. On Health Canada's cured-pork composites (ham and bacon, mean 1.375 µg/g), eaten alone about 662 g a day would reach it. The composites run from 0 to 6,965 µg/kg, and the FDA finds about 900 times less, which points to method or handling rather than the product. · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · A
• Nitrite · Not rated yet · Not rated: EFSA's 2017 acceptable daily intake for nitrite is 0.07 mg nitrite ion/kg body weight/day, 4.9 mg a day. The only survey figure found (7.31 ppm) is for uncooked bacon as sold, and this food is cooked bacon; without a sourced cooking factor the as-eaten amount is left missing. For information only, raw bacon at 7.31 ppm would reach the limit at about 670 g a day, and the cooked 15 g serving contains less by an unsourced amount, since EFSA 2017 reports that cooking significantly reduced residual nitrite in a dry-cured sausage study. · Nationalporkboard 2009 · B
• Processed meat (IARC classification) · Context · Context only. Bacon is processed meat under IARC's definition (curing, smoking). · IARC 2015 · A
• Purines and gout · Not rated yet · Not rated for people with gout or hyperuricemia: the only reference is a Japanese dietary recommendation of 400 mg purines a day, seen through Kaneko 2014 rather than an agency document, so no reference is established. Bacon measures 61.8 mg purines per 100 g (HPLC, Kaneko 2014, four purine bases). No fried figure was found, so that value stands in. A 15.0 g serving carries about 9 mg. For scale only, 400 mg would be reached at about 647 g. · Kaneko 2014 · C
• Safe cooking temperature · Worth knowing · Flagged for cooking: most bacon is sold raw and must be cooked through. Health Canada's chart does not name bacon; for pork, ham included, it gives 71 °C (160 °F). · Health Canada, safe cooking temperatures · B
• Sodium · Context · Shown as context, not rated: Health Canada's chronic disease risk reduction level (CDRR) for sodium is 2,300 mg/day for adults 19-50 (adequate intake 1,500 mg). One 15.0 g serving carries 253 mg, 11% of the CDRR; a 30 g serving would be 22%. · US food database (USDA SR Legacy) · C

Sources

• US CDC, About alpha-gal syndrome
  cdc-alpha-gal-about · page · US government work (17 USC 105), public domain
• CFIA, Food Safety Action Plan Targeted Survey: Dioxins and Dioxin-like Compounds in Selected Foods 2014-2019 (data and 2-page overview PDF; report page inspection.canada.ca)
  cfia-dioxins-2014-2019 · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• Health Canada, Canadian Nutrient File 2026 (14th edition)
  cnf-2026 · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• US FDA, Total Diet Study FY2018–FY2020 Elements Report Supplement
  fda-tds-fy2018-2020 · dataset · US government work (17 USC 105), public domain
• USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy, 2018-04
  fdc-sr-legacy-2018-04 · dataset · CC0 1.0 (public domain)
• Health Canada, Safe cooking temperatures (published 2024-06-04; page details 2020-05-29)
  hc-safe-cooking-temps · page · Government of Canada terms (Crown copyright; not OGL)
• Health Canada, Canadian Total Diet Study – Trace Elements (2005–2018 composites)
  hc-tds-trace-elements · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• IARC, Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat (2015)
  iarc-vol114-qa-2015 · full text read · IARC 2015, all rights reserved
• Kaneko K, et al. (2014) Total purine and purine base content of common foodstuffs for facilitating nutritional therapy for gout and hyperuricemia. Biol Pharm Bull 37(5):709-721 · doi:10.1248/bpb.b13-00967 · PMID 24553148
  kaneko-2014-purines · secondary source · J-STAGE open access
• National Pork Board (Pork Checkoff), 'A National Survey of the Nitrite/Nitrate Concentrations in Cured Meat Products and Non-meat Foods Available at Retail' (Keeton, Texas A&M; completed 2009-08-04; project 08-124). Funder summary page of the survey behind Nuñez de González 2012.
  nationalporkboard-keeton-2009-nitrite · page · licence not recorded
• Lehotay SJ, Sapozhnikova Y, Han L, Johnston JJ. Analysis of Nitrosamines in Cooked Bacon by QuEChERS Sample Preparation and Gas Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry with Backflushing. J Agric Food Chem 2015;63(47):10341-10351. doi:10.1021/acs.jafc.5b04527 · PMID 26542769 · pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  pmid:26542769 · abstract only · licence not recorded

Body map 2026-10-25.1: each nutrient’s job comes from an agency fact sheet, linked beside it under Good for.

The plain words: “a lot” means one serving (100 g when the food has no serving size) gives at least 20% of the daily amount (the reference intake), “some” at least 10%, “a little” at least 2% (the cut-offs are ours, one set for every page: 20% and 10% are borrowed from the US labelling terms “high” and “good source” and applied to Health Canada’s daily amount, whereas Health Canada’s own shopper rule says 15%; provisional: they may change in a later method version). The daily amount is Health Canada’s Dietary Reference Intake for adults 19–30; where men and women need different amounts we use the higher one (protein: 56 g for men, 46 g for women). The percentage printed under each nutrient is the printed amount as a share of that daily amount, rounded to the nearest whole number, and the word is read from that percentage, so the amount, the percentage and the word always agree. Calcium with a measured absorption is scaled by how well it gets in compared with milk.

The scale: “Nothing to watch” means a serving a day stays under the limit at ordinary amounts; “Go easy” means a serving a day can push past the limit for adults who already take in the most, or fewer than 2 servings reach it; “Limit it” means once a week or less. The dataset’s own rating is under “How we got this”. Provisional: the scale may change in a later method version.

Measured absorption under Good for: grade-A studies in adults that tested this preparation of this food, as a share of the listed amount (the share digested, for protein), quoted once each source has passed our evidence check; animal studies and other variants stay in the table above. Provisional: this screen may change in a later method version.