Breakin' bacon news

This morning, during our weekly grocery run, I checked in with the people at WholeFoods' cheese department to see whether they were likely to get the Vosges chocolate bar with bacon any time soon.

"Oh yeah, I heard about that," said the assistant cheesemonger. "Let me go check."

He came back with another guy, obviously the Big Cheese (oh, like you didn't see that coming), who explained that any new inventory additions needed to be approved at a regional level before making it to individual branches.

But there was an added wrinkle. An extra-thick rind, if you will.

"If it turns out the bacon has nitrates, we won't order any," he said. "That's what happened to the wasabi bar; turned out it had Yellow No. 5, so we stopped carrying it."

So WholeFood's selections of chocolate, wine, butter, beef, heavy cream, pork-liver terrine and brie are all healthy dietary choices, but a little nitrate is going to kill ya? Yeah, I know, I know ...

As we're heading to Austin in a week, home of WholeFoods' flagship store (80,000 square feet of organics, including walk-in beer cooler! Chocolate fountain! Live music!), I can check to see whether they care about nitrates. They probably do, the spoilsports.

And of course, worst-case scenario is just ordering some from the Vosges website, nitrates and all ...