Not every pork belly is the same, and the fattier ones are sold as a cheaper brand. If you've ever bought the really cheap bacon, it shrivels up to nothing as it cooks. So the window does let you know what you're getting and let you make a price/value decision about how much fat you're willing to pay for.

I suspect that brand affinity may have something to do with people not using that window regularly. Once you find a bacon you like it's going to be relatively consistent. But without the window you can't really compare two brands.

You can do what consumers of other things do - buy a sample of each, taste which one you like the best and keep buying that one. It's not like we're talking about taking mortgage here, it's a pack of bacon, costing how much, five bucks?

If you are looking at premium brands, significantly more perhaps; lots of people are frugal enough that even if they are going to try more than one, they'd like to narrow the selection down before doing so -- and even decide whether or not its worth buying any at their regular store, or whether they need to try elsewhere.

If you're looking for a premium brand, a small window is not going to help you much. I don't know how good your sight is, but mine doesn't allow me to bake it and taste it through the plastic ;) and if you're into premium brands, the sight won't be your defining factor.

The regulation wasn't there because it was a thoughtful idea; it was implemented because there were real, loud, consumer complaints about how much fat/lean ratio was in bacon in a hidden container, IIRC.

Any source on "real, loud, consumer complaints"? If you remember it, it must be based on some sources.

Well, to start with, the zeitgeist of the times - https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8846774/Wall.htm... Then you can look at the consumer complaints to the US Government which spurred Congressional hearings in 1965 bringing about the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, where just for example, a consumer complaint testified that "As if bacon packaging wasn't deceptive enough, <*> has the practice of putting pieces of 100% fat slapped together under the bacon completely out of sight", among so many others. Get those transcripts. Personally, the only reason I am aware of it was that it was on the news, and I was a kid; I mean, the news was only 30 minutes nightly so topics like Vietnam got airtime and were memorable; upset consumers I do remember. In those days, I think, bacon was a necessity, very much a staple, more so than today because of meat or nitrate avoidance - it is what you had for breakfast; people knew how to buy bacon as they had been buying it from a butcher directly, could gauge lean/fat ratio and had very high expectations, but apparently were being ripped off. You'd have to find those newsreels to verify my claims.

It's a fine regulation. Anyone who cares can visually evaluate an individual package prior to purchasing it. With no window, it'd be a crapshoot to do things like price shop, because who knows what is in that completely covered package.

If you don't trust the package, nobody forces you to buy it.

Yes of course not.

But it is still the case that the regulation isn't as silly as you made it out to be, it's not exactly expensive for producers to leave a clear window in their clear plastic packaging and it has some benefit to consumers.

Maybe it's related to this discussion, but I was comparing packages of bacon using the window just today...