What Is Umaro Foods Plant-Based Bacon?
Umaro is a plant-based bacon made primarily from red seaweed protein rather than the soy, pea, or wheat gluten that most vegan bacon brands rely on. The company was founded by Beth Zotter, a former renewable-energy researcher, and Amanda Stiles, a biochemist, who set out to build a meat alternative around a crop that grows fast, needs no fresh water or fertilizer, and is already a major food source in parts of Asia: kelp. Umaro's pitch is that seaweed protein can mimic the fatty, umami-rich chew of pork bacon better than legume proteins do, while also being one of the more sustainable raw materials in the plant-based meat category.
The brand got a big publicity boost from a 2022 appearance on Shark Tank, where Mark Cuban offered the founders $1 million for a 7% stake (though it's unclear whether that deal was ever finalized), and NBA star Chris Paul later invested as well. Since then, Umaro has raised additional funding — including a $3.8 million round in 2024 — to scale up manufacturing and bring per-unit costs down. As of 2026, the bacon ships in two flavors, Applewood and Smoky Black Pepper, and is sold on Amazon, at Whole Foods locations in California, and through foodservice distributors that supply it to restaurants and menus around the country.
Each retail package holds about 2.8 ounces of bacon strips (roughly three servings), and a single pack typically runs close to $9 online — noticeably more per ounce than most soy- or pea-based competitors, and a price point that ends up mattering a lot once you get to the taste test below.
Ingredients
Umaro's Applewood bacon lists its ingredients as: sunflower oil, coconut oil, sea moss extracts (agar agar, carrageenan), water, a protein blend of chickpea protein and seaweed protein, cane sugar, sea salt, vegetable juice (added for color), natural flavors including natural smoke flavor, and paprika extract.
The "sea moss extracts" are doing a lot of the structural work here. Agar agar and carrageenan are both gelling agents derived from red seaweed, and together with the oil blend they're what give the strips their fatty marbling and let them firm up and crisp at the edges when cooked, similar to how gelatin or animal fat behaves in real bacon. The protein blend pairs seaweed protein with chickpea protein, which is a smaller share of the ingredient list than you'd see in a soy- or pea-protein-forward bacon — a big part of why the nutrition profile below looks so different from, say, Upton's Naturals seitan bacon. Vegetable juice supplies the reddish-pink color instead of nitrites, and there's no gluten or soy anywhere in the formula, which makes it one of the few bacon alternatives that's simultaneously vegan, soy-free, and gluten-free. If you're checking a specific package against an allergen list or trying to verify a claim like this yourself, the spvegan.com ingredient checker is a fast way to scan a label for anything that shouldn't be there.
Is Umaro Bacon Vegan?
Yes, Umaro's plant-based bacon is vegan. Every ingredient on the label — the oils, the seaweed-derived gelling agents, the chickpea and seaweed protein blend, the cane sugar, the vegetable juice coloring, and the natural flavors — comes from a plant or algae source. There's no dairy, egg, honey, gelatin, or any other animal-derived additive in the formula, and Umaro markets the product explicitly as 100% plant-based.
The one ingredient worth a second look for very strict vegans is cane sugar. Some cane sugar is filtered through bone char during refining, a process more common with certain bulk white sugar sold in the U.S. than with sugar used in branded packaged foods, and manufacturers rarely disclose which refining method they use. Umaro hasn't published specifics on its sugar sourcing, so if bone-char filtration is a hard line for you, it's worth reaching out to the company directly. For the vast majority of vegans — anyone drawing the line at animal products actually present in the finished food — this is a non-issue, and the product is vegan without qualification.
Nutrition Facts: How Does Umaro Compare?
Because Umaro leans on seaweed and chickpea extracts rather than a dense soy or wheat protein, it lands closer to real pork bacon nutritionally than most legume-based alternatives — mostly fat calories, minimal protein. Here's how a serving stacks up against three other vegan bacon brands:
| Product | Serving | Calories | Total Fat | Sat Fat | Sodium | Protein | Approx. Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Umaro Applewood Bacon | 3 strips (26.7g) | 190 | 20g | 7g | 450mg | 1g | ~$9 / 2.8 oz |
| Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan | 2 oz (57g) | 80 | 0.5g | 0g | 400mg | 15g | ~$6 / 8 oz |
| Sweet Earth Benevolent Bacon | 1 slice (20g) | 45 | 1.5g | — | — | 4g | ~$6 / 5.5 oz |
| Hooray Foods Plant-Based Bacon | 2 strips | 80 | 5g | — | — | 0g | ~$7 / 5 oz |
Umaro is the outlier on both ends: the highest calorie and fat count per serving of the group by a wide margin, and — despite the "protein blend" branding — the lowest protein content, at just 1 gram per serving. If you're buying vegan bacon specifically to hit a protein number, this is not the product to reach for; Upton's wheat-gluten-based seitan bacon delivers 15 times more protein per serving. Umaro's nutrition profile is a closer match to real pork bacon's fat-heavy, low-protein makeup, which is either a feature or a drawback depending on why you're eating bacon in the first place.
Taste and Texture
Umaro's own marketing describes the bacon as having a crispy exterior that gives way to a "smoky, umami richness," and the ingredient list is clearly engineered to chase that specific bacon experience — fat that renders, edges that crisp, a reddish hue instead of the grayish-brown most soy-based strips turn out. On paper, seaweed's naturally briny, savory character is a smart shortcut to umami that doesn't require the liquid smoke overload some competitors lean on.
In practice, independent taste tests have been less impressed. A multi-brand comparison from Tasting Table that pitted seven plant-based bacon brands against each other ranked Umaro last, describing the strips as "a little too oily," which the reviewers said made it harder to get the crispiness the product promises — a real problem for a bacon substitute, since crisp texture is most of what people are chasing. That critique lands harder given Umaro's price: at roughly $9 for a 2.8-ounce retail pack (and around $117 for a 5-pound, 275-strip foodservice case), it's priced at a premium over most competitors, and the Tasting Table review specifically called out that the higher cost didn't translate into a better eating experience compared to cheaper options.
None of that means the product is inedible — plenty of home cooks report it crisps up fine with a slightly hotter pan and less oil than the package suggests, and the smoky, salty flavor is generally well liked. But if "crispy like real bacon" is the single thing you're buying vegan bacon for, it's fair to go in with tempered expectations and to cook it in a dry, well-preheated pan rather than following instructions written for oilier formulas.
How Umaro Compares to Other Vegan Bacon Brands
| Product | Protein Source | Texture Style | Allergens | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Umaro | Seaweed + chickpea | Fatty, marbled, meant to crisp | Soy-free, gluten-free | Sustainability-focused shoppers, soy/gluten-free diets |
| Upton's Naturals | Vital wheat gluten (seitan) | Chewy, dense, high-protein | Contains gluten | People who want bacon as a protein source |
| Sweet Earth | Soy protein / seitan blend | Thin, smoky, less crispy | Contains soy, gluten | Sandwiches and BLTs where crispness matters less |
| Hooray Foods | Coconut oil-based | Crispiest of the group, very rice-paper thin | Contains coconut, rice | People chasing maximum crispiness |
Umaro's real differentiator isn't taste-test dominance — it's the raw material. If avoiding soy and gluten matters to you, or if you specifically want to support a company building a market for a genuinely under-farmed, low-input crop like seaweed, Umaro is one of the only bacon alternatives that checks those boxes at the same time.
Who Should Buy Umaro Bacon?
- Buy it if: you need a soy-free and gluten-free vegan bacon, you're curious about seaweed-based protein, or you want a fattier, more indulgent bacon substitute rather than a lean, high-protein one.
- Skip it if: you're buying vegan bacon to hit a protein target, you're price-sensitive and have access to cheaper competitors, or crispiness is non-negotiable and you're not willing to adjust your cooking method.
- Consider instead: Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan if protein content matters most, or Hooray Foods if crisp texture is the priority and soy/gluten aren't a concern.
Final Verdict
Umaro is a genuinely interesting piece of food-tech — a bacon alternative built around a fast-growing, low-input crop, backed by real venture funding and a Shark Tank moment, and free of the soy and gluten that rule out other vegan bacons for some shoppers. The ingredient list is clean, it's unambiguously vegan, and the nutrition profile does a better job of mimicking real bacon's fat-forward makeup than most legume-based competitors.
Where it falls short is the basic job any bacon substitute has to do: crisp up and taste better than the alternative you'd buy for less. Independent taste tests have flagged the same oiliness issue that makes crisping difficult, and at close to double the per-ounce price of some rivals, it's a tough sell purely on eating experience. This is a brand worth rooting for and worth trying once for the novelty and the soy/gluten-free angle — just don't expect it to unseat your go-to vegan bacon on flavor alone.
Rating: 6.2/10 — Real innovation and a clean ingredient list, held back by inconsistent crispiness and a premium price that outpaces the eating experience.
