What Is Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan?
Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan is a wheat-gluten-based bacon alternative from the Chicago vegan food company Upton's Naturals, which has been making 100% plant-based seitan products since 2006. Unlike the newer wave of coconut-oil-and-rice-paper bacon strips built to fry up crispy and shatter like the real thing, this one goes a completely different route: it's built on vital wheat gluten, giving it a dense, chewy, deli-style texture closer to a smoked meat than a crisped strip.
It ships pre-cooked, refrigerated or frozen, in 5-ounce packs of pre-cut strips, and it's meant to be pan-fried for a couple of minutes just to warm through and pick up a sear — not deep-cooked the way you'd cook raw pork belly. That's the whole pitch: smoky, salty, protein-heavy bacon flavor for BLTs, breakfast plates, salads, and pizza, without the pig.
Ingredients
The full ingredient list, straight from the packaging and Upton's Naturals' own product page, is short: water, vital wheat gluten, soy sauce (water, soybeans, wheat, salt), whole wheat flour, natural hickory smoke concentrate, paprika, sea salt, onion.
That's it — eight ingredients, all of them plant-based, with nothing exotic or hard to pronounce. There's no added oil in the ingredient list itself (you add your own when pan-frying), no gums or isolates, and no proprietary "flavor" blend hiding animal-derived additives. For anyone who's used to scanning labels with the spvegan.com ingredient checker before buying, this is about as easy a pass as a processed product gets.
Is Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan Vegan?
Yes. Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan is 100% vegan. Upton's Naturals is an entirely plant-based company — every product in its lineup, not just this one, is formulated without meat, dairy, eggs, or honey. There's no gelatin, no casein, no whey, no natural flavors sourced from animal products, and no ambiguous "may contain" language pointing to shellfish or fish-derived ingredients (a problem that trips up plenty of other savory, umami-forward products — see our breakdown of Worcestershire sauce and fish sauce hiding in soy sauce for how often that happens).
The one label caveat worth flagging isn't about veganism at all: this is not gluten-free. Vital wheat gluten is the base of the entire product, and it also contains wheat flour and wheat-derived soy sauce. Anyone with celiac disease or a wheat allergy needs to skip this one regardless of how vegan-friendly it is.
Nutrition Facts
Here's how it stacks up against another seitan-based vegan bacon and against conventional pork bacon. Vegan bacon nutrition varies a lot by base ingredient (seitan is protein-heavy; coconut-oil-based strips run higher in saturated fat), so it's worth comparing more than just calories.
| Product | Serving | Calories | Total Fat | Sat. Fat | Sodium | Carbs | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan | 2 oz (57g) | 80 | 0.5g | 0g | 400mg | 5g | 15g |
| Sweet Earth Benevolent Bacon (Hickory & Sage) | 39g / 2 slices | 100 | 4g | 0g | 250mg | 7g | 10g |
| Conventional pork bacon (typical, cooked) | ~16g / 2 slices | ~80-90 | ~6-7g | ~2-3g | ~180mg | 0g | ~5-6g |
The standout number is protein: at 15 grams per 2-ounce serving, Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan has roughly two to three times the protein of both a comparable seitan competitor and real pork bacon, at a fraction of the fat. Sodium is the tradeoff — 400mg per serving is meaningfully higher than Sweet Earth's option and more than double a typical pork bacon serving, so this isn't the pick if you're watching sodium closely. It's also virtually fat-free by bacon standards, with zero saturated fat, which is the main selling point of the seitan-base approach over coconut-oil-based vegan bacons that lean on saturated fat to mimic pork's richness.
Taste and Texture
This is where Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan is going to split people, and it's important to be upfront about it: this does not crisp up and shatter the way cooked pork bacon (or the coconut-oil-based vegan bacons designed to mimic it) does. Because it's a wheat-gluten protein rather than a fat-and-starch strip, pan-frying it gives you a seared, slightly chewy exterior with a soft, springy interior — closer to a smoked deli meat or jerky-adjacent texture than to crispy bacon. Reviewers consistently describe the bite as "chewy" or "spongy" rather than crunchy, and that's the single most common complaint in user reviews.
Where it delivers is flavor. The natural hickory smoke concentrate reads as genuinely smoky rather than artificial or liquid-smoke-harsh, and the soy sauce base gives it a clean, salty umami backbone instead of the sweeter, more synthetic flavor profile some processed vegan meats lean on. Cooked in a hot pan with a little oil for 3-5 minutes, the edges do pick up some char and a bit of crispness even if the center stays chewy — crumbling it into bits (for a BLT or on top of a salad) hides the texture issue better than trying to serve it as a whole flat strip next to eggs.
The verdict on texture really depends on what you're using it for. In a sandwich, chopped over a salad, or crumbled into a breakfast hash, the chew disappears into the dish and the smoky flavor does the work. Served solo as a straight bacon-and-eggs replacement, expecting crispy strips, it's going to disappoint.
How It Compares to Other Vegan Bacon
| Product | Base | Texture | Protein | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan | Vital wheat gluten | Chewy, smoky, deli-style | High (15g/serving) | Sandwiches, salads, crumbled toppings |
| Sweet Earth Benevolent Bacon | Seitan | Firmer, thinner strips | Moderate (10g/serving) | Side-plate bacon, BLTs |
| Coconut-oil-based vegan bacon (various brands) | Coconut oil, rice paper or coconut meat | Crispy, shatters like pork bacon | Low (often 0g/serving) | Classic crispy-bacon-and-eggs plates |
| Tempeh bacon (homemade or store-bought) | Fermented soybeans | Firm, slightly nutty, holds a crisp edge | High | Meal prep, oven-baked batches |
If crispiness is the top priority, a coconut-oil-based strip is going to beat Upton's Naturals every time — that's simply what fat-based products are built to do. But those products typically bring close to zero protein and noticeably more saturated fat per serving. Upton's Naturals sits at the opposite end: high protein, low fat, more chew. It's worth noting that one of the best-known coconut-based options, Hooray Foods, shut down operations in late 2024 and is no longer being produced, which is part of why seitan-based bacon has become the more consistently available option at mainstream grocery chains in 2026.
How to Cook It for the Best Results
Because the product ships fully cooked, "cooking" it is really just reheating and searing — but how you do that changes the eating experience more than with most vegan meats. The package instructions call for thawing frozen strips under cold running water for about 10 minutes, or letting them thaw in the fridge for 24 hours if you're planning ahead, then pan-frying over medium heat for 3-5 minutes with a light coating of oil until the edges sear.
A few adjustments make a real difference if the chewy texture is your main hesitation. Slicing the strips thinner than they come, or cutting them into smaller lardon-style pieces before frying, exposes more surface area to the pan and gets you noticeably more browning and a crispier bite than frying whole strips. A hotter pan with slightly more oil, cooked a minute or two longer than the package suggests, also helps — just watch for burning since the sugars in the soy sauce and hickory smoke concentrate will char faster than plain seitan. Air frying at around 375°F is another option some reviewers prefer over stovetop, since the circulating heat dries the surface out a bit more evenly.
What doesn't work well: microwaving. Like most seitan products, a microwave leaves it soft and slightly rubbery with none of the smoky sear that makes this product worth buying in the first place. If you only have a few minutes and a microwave, you're better off eating it cold, sliced into a sandwich, than nuking it.
Where to Buy It and What It Costs
Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan is distributed fairly widely for a smaller vegan brand — it shows up in the refrigerated meat-alternative section at Whole Foods, Kroger-family stores, ShopRite, Fred Meyer, and independent natural grocers, plus online through Upton's Naturals' own site and major grocery delivery platforms. Pricing for the 5-ounce retail pack typically lands in the same range as other refrigerated seitan and tempeh products at natural grocers — expect to pay a premium over a regular pack of pork bacon, which is standard across the plant-based meat category right now.
Who Should Buy This
This is a strong pick if you want a high-protein, low-fat, low-saturated-fat bacon substitute to crumble into dishes rather than serve as a standalone crispy strip — think BLTs, breakfast burritos, pasta carbonara, loaded baked potatoes, or bits over a Cobb salad. It's also a good option for anyone specifically trying to avoid coconut oil (whether for taste preference or a coconut sensitivity) since it's built on an entirely different base.
It's not the right pick if you're chasing an exact crispy-bacon-and-eggs experience, if sodium is a concern you're actively managing, or if you need something gluten-free — all valid reasons to look elsewhere in the vegan bacon aisle instead.
Final Verdict
Upton's Naturals Bacon Seitan does exactly what it sets out to do: deliver real smoky, salty bacon flavor and a genuinely high protein count from a short, honest ingredient list, without pretending to be something it's not. The texture is a legitimate tradeoff, not a hidden flaw — it's chewy where pork bacon is crisp, and that will bother some people more than others depending on how they plan to use it. Judged as a flavor-and-protein add-in rather than a strip-for-strip bacon clone, it earns a solid recommendation.
Rating: 7.5/10 — Excellent flavor and nutrition profile, held back half a point by the chewy texture and a sodium count that's higher than it needs to be.
