evidence: It was Finnebrogue Naked that first demonstrated in the UK in 2018 that nitrate-free bacon butties were possible. Based in Northern Ireland, the company started out making sausages for M&S, but the WHO’s 2015 report on processed meat gave them an idea. "We thought: we’ve got all this volume of pork; why don’t we step in and try and do this the ‘proper’ way?" says Jago Pearson, chief strategy officer at Finnebrogue. In 2018, the company launched its Naked Bacon (now renamed Better Naked) brand and began producing M&S’s own label nitrate-free bacon. Now it’s supplying Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, Asda and Morrisons.