Bacon: it's an obsession for some people, a casual side dish for others. At Bacon Scouts we like to find the best bacon and write about it. Here are eight facts that might surprise you about bacon to use at your next cocktail party or to use as pick up lines at a bacon festival near you.

1. Bacon is consumed by 34.2% of the population.

You or someone you know eats bacon.

2. 18.1% of In-Home Pork Consumption is Bacon

That's right - nearly 1/5 of all pork consumption in the United States in 2009 was bacon. Number 1 was ham at 31.1% and number 2 was sausage at 19.8%.

3. 10% of pork consumption on restaurant menus is bacon.

One out of every ten dishes has bacon? I must not go to the right restaurants!

4. The number of restaurant menu items featuring bacon grew by 54% from 2000-2009.

Mmmm...bacon.

5. Less than 6% of a typical hog is usable for bacon.

A typical live pig weighing 265 pounds produces 15.4 pounds of bacon. So much pig, yet so little bacon.

6. 1.7 billion pounds of bacon is used in U.S. foodservice annually.

So if an ideal hog produces 15.4 pounds of bacon then more than 110 million hogs are slaughtered to meet the demands for bacon. Wow!

7. In the United States, the South consumes the most bacon at 600 million pounds.

This is followed by the Northeast at 436 million, the Midwest at 419 million, and the West at 285 million pounds. This is fascinating considering the Midwest leads the nation in pork production followed by North Carolina. Westerners just need some bacon evangelization.

8. International Bacon Day is August 31.

Isn't bacon day every day? Figures gathered from the Pork Checkoff and other fine resources.