Kyle Munson

kmunson@dmreg.com

Perhaps we take it too much for granted that bacon has come to dominate the state of Iowa, let alone our Iowa State Fair. (I know that my colleague Joshua Hafner doesn't take it for granted.)

Sure, every other new stick food introduced at the fair must be wrapped in bacon, baked with bacon, sprinkled with bacon bits -- in other words must in some way pay allegiance to the power that pork wields over Iowans' appetites and political process.

But perhaps it won't always be this way. The safe bet, then, is to indoctrinate our kids in bacon appreciation as early as possible.

Thus I happened to witness what might have been the State Fair's inaugural kids' bacon-eating contest.

The nominal name of the event at the Paul R. Knapp Animal Learning Center was "Bacon Palooza." On previous days at the fair, organizers helped kids fashion structures (barns, etc.) out of bacon -- not the world's strongest building material, in case you noticed.

But then they ran out of Styrofoam.

Then they ran out of toilet-paper rolls as a backup.

What's more, said one of the Learning Center managers, Taylor Jacobs, Thursday's bacon was more cooked and crumbly than normal.

Hmm. So what the heck can we have the kids do with the bacon?

Of course: Stage an impromptu bacon-eating contest!

So half a dozen kids stepped up to a table, each with three strips of bacon.

"They couldn't shove them all in their mouths at once, for safety reasons," Jacobs said. It was supposed to be strip by strip.

Maybe Jacobs should stand in the middle of the Grand Concourse and remind fairgoers of such manners.

For several minutes the scene was a row of cute kids, their cheeks puffed out and stuffed full off bacon like a bunch of chipmunks. Parents looked on and shot phone video footage.

Marion Boot of Clive, 7, emerged victorious.

It felt "really good" to devour a pile of bacon, she said. But it's not her favorite food. That would be cake.

Then she scurried to the pie-eating contest immediately after her first win of the day.

What was her secret to eating bacon so fast?

"Shoving it in your mouth," she said.

Thus Iowa bacon culture is handed down to the next generation.