In 1924, a German immigrant named Oscar Mayer began producing and selling sliced, packaged bacon in Chicago. Previously, bacon had to be ordered, sliced, and wrapped in paper at the meat counter—services for which customers paid extra—or, more cheaply, bought in slabs and sliced at home with varying degrees of success and food safety. Mayer wasn’t the first to slice bacon before it hit the shops or even the first to protect it with ready-made, easy-to-grab packaging. But he knew a good idea when he saw one; by marketing these innovations extensively, Mayer helped make bacon a true convenience product, more accessible to consumers and easier to cook consistently. And in so doing, he helped usher in a new era of ubiquity for bacon in American homes.

Packaged bacon has come a long way since 1924, but its popularity endures. According to a recent report by market research group Mintel, 70 percent of American adults eat it regularly. We wanted to know how the classic supermarket bacons measured up, so we bought five of the top-selling products (as assessed by IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm), priced from $4.00 to $10.39 per pound. We tasted them side by side, both plain and in BLTs.