I love the crispy, greasy—but not greasy enough to pool onto your plate like a congealed puddle—kind of bacon. The kind that begs to be dipped into the last smear of ketchup. The sizzling ...

It turns out that bacon is a rather controversial food. When I accepted the job to test it, I did so without hesitation. After all, I love bacon, and I knew that I could easily recruit some volunteers ...

But since my experiment amounted to roughly $50 for two small pinches of “bacon” plus an enormous clean-up effort, I’ve left further improvements to those in the lab.