7 Bacon Brands You Should Buy And 7 You Might Want To Skip

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Name another food that's as well-loved as bacon. It's okay, we'll wait. Harder than it sounds, right? The almost-mythical foodstuff can be found in fridges on almost every street in the United States and is perfectly at home on a breakfast plate as it is being served up for dinner.

While bacon recipes and styles vary, generally, folks stick to what they know, which is those fatty strips of perfectly crispy, salty pork. This impulse we all have to serve up perfect bacon every time is perhaps what leads us to stick to buying well-known brands when we're at the store. Companies like Oscar Mayer, Hormel, and Smithfield are some of the most popular names in the bacon industry, and have built up loyal followings that buy their products in large quantities, per Statista.

But just because something has good name recognition, doesn't mean it's necessarily good. And amongst the dozens of recognizable bacon brands, which are worth their salt, and which should be left on the shelf? We wanted to lay out, once and for all, which packs of bacon you should be buying and which you should skip, for reasons like their nutritional quality, price, and plain old taste. Join us, and let's separate the good from the bad.

If you've bought bacon at any point in the last few months, there's a strong chance Oscar Mayer made it. This brand dominates the bacon game, and its sheer popularity arguably leads to people buying it whether it's any good or not.

And while Oscar Mayer bacon is tasty, it may not be the best brand out there, because of what's lurking inside your slices. Oscar Mayer Naturally Hardwood Smoked Bacon contains several preservative ingredients, including sodium phosphates, sodium ascorbate, and sodium nitrite. This nitrite content is a little troubling. When you consume them, you can increase your risk of developing certain health conditions, including cancer. Bacon tends to be exceptionally high in nitrates and nitrites, which are needed to increase its shelf life and ensure it stays fresh when you get it home. And while certain foods can be a healthy source of nitrites, bacon isn't one of them. It's far better to skip buying your regular pack of Oscar Mayer, and seek out bacon brands that have no added preservatives, to reduce the risk of any associated health issues.

There's a certain appeal to irregularly sliced bacon, with all of its homely charm. Picking up a pack makes you feel as though the product you're getting hasn't been uniformly processed through a factory. However, there are also occasions where "irregularly sliced" could mean "the leftover scraps of bacon we couldn't sell otherwise." And that might just be the case with Aberdeen Farms Irregularly Sliced Value Bacon, which is far from a winner. 

Unfortunately, Aberdeen Farms' value offering just doesn't cut the mustard, primarily due to its unpleasant taste, as multiple despondent customers have noted, "Not buying this bacon again, Aberdeen Farms. Too salty and fatty," said a buyer who surely wanted their money back, via Twitter. Another person was even more critical, proclaiming that while they had previously not realized that sub-par bacon could exist, it was Aberdeen Farms' offering that tipped them over the edge (via Twitter). These claims that Aberdeen Farms Irregularly Sliced Value Bacon is too sodium-packed and fat-rich seem to be backed up by its nutritional information, which shows that it contains 10% of both your recommended sodium and saturated fat intake in just a half-ounce of product. Personally, we'd give this pork product a wide berth.

Look, turkey bacon can be a little hit-and-miss, guys. And when it misses, it really misses. Unfortunately, Jennie-O Turkey Bacon is a good example of turkey bacon that should be avoided. This bacon is primarily troublesome because of its strange texture. Jennie-O Turkey Bacon has a slimy, gooey consistency on its surface that just feels weird, and unsurprisingly, makes it pretty unappetizing. For some customers, the slime coating was so offputting that their pack of bacon went straight into the trash, with other customers also pointing out that its slices feel overly thin and tear easily.

To add insult to injury, the ingredients list for Jennie-O Turkey Bacon is pretty extensive. One look at the contents of this bacon reveals that it has a wide variety of additives, including potassium acetate, sodium diacetate, sodium phosphate, sodium nitrite, and sodium erythorbate. While these additives are present in the bacon to preserve it and retain its flavor, it does indicate the potential amount of processing that this meat has undergone. When you combine that with its slimy texture, you might be better off buying something else.

No matter how you cook bacon, it will usually come out delicious (unless you're burning it to a crisp). But sometimes, that pack of bacon in the fridge just can't be salvaged. And if it's Jamestown Brand Sliced Bacon, you might be better off throwing it out and starting again.

Jamestown Brand Sliced Bacon ranks low in our books for several reasons, explained through multiple poor reviews via Fooducate. The first sin that it commits is the thinness of its strips. "Some slices were ridiculously thin, and some got burnt at the standard cooking temperature," one regretful customer says, also stating that another package they bought had slices that varied wildly in size. 

Its packaging also limits the amount of bacon you can see before buying it, which means that you're essentially playing guesswork with what your food will eventually look like. Unfortunately, this packaging has led to a lot of regretful purchases. "I bought two packs and there was nothing but fat," explained one unhappy person. Other customers have lamented the sub-standard taste of this bacon. "This is the worst bacon ever," one particularly vocal person said after buying it. Reviews don't come more negative than this, folks.

With the word "hometown" in its name, you wouldn't be wrong to assume that Smithfield Hometown Original Bacon is wholesome, hearty, and inspires memories of a family kitchen table. Alas, that's not what you get with this product. Smithfield Hometown Original Bacon, one of Smithfield's many bacon products, is a thin, vaguely disappointing affair. With super-slim pieces of bacon, when it's cooked, it reduces even more in size, and you end up with disappointing slices that have no bite to them. They also tend to become super greasy, leaving you with meat that's swimming in fat.

And if that's not enough to make you buy something else, just take a look at its nutritional info. Smithfield Hometown Original Bacon is one of the fattier options you can buy (probably why it leaks so much grease) and has three grams of saturated fat per serving. It's also got a notable amount of sodium, providing 290 milligrams in two slices of bacon. Considering that these slices are thin anyway, that's a fair amount. And to top it all off, Smithfield's bacon also contains nitrites, which is never a great sign.

Hormel is a well-known bacon brand, so you might assume that it's got its quality down. But when any company is the size that Hormel is, there's a risk that it's compromising on something. Unfortunately, in Hormel Black Label Brown Sugar Thick Cut Bacon's case, it's the sodium content. This bacon has one of the highest sodium levels of any bacon we've seen, with 470 milligrams in each serving.

For context, this means that in one serving of Hormel Black Label Brown Sugar Thick Cut Bacon, you're going to be eating almost a fifth of the entire adult daily recommended allowance of 2,300 milligrams in one go. That's a lot for a foodstuff that only has 110 calories in the same serving size. And when you consider nine out of 10 Americans are eating too much sodium anyway, and that overconsumption of sodium contributes to heart disease, do you really wanna risk it? You're far better off seeking out a bacon brand that's less heavy on the salt. It'll probably still be as flavorful, and your cardiovascular system will be grateful.

Oh, dear. It takes a lot for a product to get a 2.8-star average rating at Walmart. But somehow, Great Value Naturally Hickory Smoked Thick-Sliced Bacon manages it. First off, let's start with the positives. This bacon does have pleasingly thick slices, and there's a uniformity to their size, which customers seem to love. True to its name, it's also good value for the money it costs.

But the problem is, this bacon is just way too fatty. Some fat is, of course, essential to bacon's taste, but in Walmart's offering, the ratio is way off. "Don't purchase. Full of fat," one disappointed customer states. Another writes, "This is exactly why I don't buy Great Value products from Walmart. There's no meat on the bacon." Customers also took issue with the taste of the bacon, with a reviewer saying that it doesn't even taste like bacon at all and that there's something strange and "off" about its flavor. You're far better off spending a little extra money and getting a quality product, instead of buying what seems like a large amount of fat in a vacuum-sealed bag.