Ken Albala

Let me give you a weird anecdote, just that I think when I was very young,

My mother used to put me in the high chair in front of cooking shows on TV and give me whitefish, which is a very American thing.

I don't even know the species, but it comes from the Great Lakes and they smoke it.

And it's just this lovely, delicate, salty, oily fish.

And that apparently made me happy for hours.

I could just sit there with my fingers and munch on this.

And whenever I smell something similar, and it's partly the taste, but it's immediately the smell, it brings me right back to that moment immediately.

Gosh, I can't imagine anything like, you know, bacon and ham and sausages and smoked food going away because it really is a fantastic flavour.

I think in the short term, people are going to start eating less of it because of the warnings and it will become more of a luxury.

But there's nothing wrong with that.

But something traditionally made, not only is it really fun to do,

but it connects you with the past in a way that reading a book or looking at a painting or listening to music really can't in an absolute immediate way because you're actually putting the food in your mouth and tasting something that our species has been doing for so long.