The Worst New Walmart Foods of 2021
When your favorite grocery store adds new options to the shelves, fridges, and freezers, it's usually a cause for celebration. But for every exciting new product to be found, there are plenty you should leave out of that grocery cart. And that was very much the case with the new foods Walmart added this year.
In good food news, in the fall, Daring Foods began selling its plant-based chicken alternatives in some 3,000 Walmart stores, according to TechCrunch. Salty but delicious Takis Fuego Old El Paso Taco Shells came to Walmart as well. And so-called ghost kitchens in Walmart centers started churning out foods from chains like Nathan's Famous, The Cheesecake Factory, Cinnabon, and so many more restaurants, increasing food access, via Supermarket News.
In not-so-good news, Walmart also introduced these train-wreck products in 2021 as well. For more, check out 10 Biggest Changes Walmart Made This Year.
Bolt24 Antioxidant Drink
If you're actually working out and sweating hard, then one of these drinks is an OK choice, though water is still better. A Bolt24 will replenish some of the electrolytes you sweat out, albeit with more salts than needed. And take a look at the ingredient list: the second thing in here is sugar.
Pillsbury Soft Baked Confetti Cookies
Sure, these cookies that are proudly "made with real butter" may taste good, but they are bad news nutrition-wise. Just two measly cookies net you almost a quarter of the amount of sugars you should consume in an entire day.
Mott's Animals Fruit Flavored Snacks
While these new fruit snacks may be fat-free and low in sodium, they are high in sugar and completely devoid of any nutritional value beyond a decent serving of vitamin C. As with most "fruit snacks," this is candy going by another name–the first ingredient is corn syrup, the second is sugar, and the third is modified corn starch.
Sour Patch Snack Pack
Positioned as some sort of fruit-adjacent snack, or at least as akin to pudding, which at least may have a bit of calcium in it, the new Sour Patch Snack Packs are essentially sugar goo. One serving has an appalling 22 grams of added sugars, which is 44% of the RDA for an adult. And adults are hardly the target demo here.
Doritos 3D Crunch Spicy Ranch
High in sodium and on the fattier side, these chips would be low on the recommendation list were nutrition the only metric at play here. But the fact that they also have a mere 3.2-out-of-five star rating with customers is another red flag.
Pringles Scorchin' BBQ Chips
These spicy new Pringles have a taste worthy of only 3.9 stars even with well over a hundred reviews posted and a nutritional profile hardly worthy of praise. They're rather fatty, rather salty, and you know you're going to eat two or three servings worth if you eat that first single chip.
Sunkist Orange Zero Sugar Orange Soda
Sure, this soda may be free of calories, sugars, and fats, but it's packed with artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and artificial colors. Some studies have shown that diet sodas are not the free pass they seem to be. Drinking diet soda can lead to weight gain and have a negative impact on bone health.
Pocky Strawberry Cream Covered Biscuit Sticks
Packaged and marketed as a healthy snack, these Pocky Strawberry Cream Covered Biscuit Sticks are really just a sweet treat. They have 18% of your RDA for saturated fat and more than 18% of your daily allotment for sugars in one serving that's a mere 150 calories.
Ritter Sport Chocolate Butter Biscuits
Granted, few people will think a product titled in part "Chocolate Butter Biscuit" is going to be all that healthy, but the eight grams of saturated fat per a mere 210-calorie serving is still enough to surprise, and not in a pleasant way.
Applegate Natural Gluten-Free Uncured Beef Corn Dogs
As with foods in the vegan category, these new corn dogs prove that you can't trust a gluten-free product to be a healthy product. They are fatty, high in sodium, and they have a fair amount of added sugars, too.
JD's Vegan Apple Butter Ice Cream
Vegan ice cream is great for those who avoid consuming animal products but if you think of all vegan foods as healthy alternatives, then this one is going to dispel that way of thinking. This ice cream is loaded with sugar, and all of the fat to be found here is saturated fat because this product is mostly coconut cream.
Hot Ones Boneless Chicken Bites
We could cluck our tongues a bit at the fats here, but only a bit. The real issue is the sodium, which deserves a full-finger wag. A three-piece serving of these chicken bites has a staggering 560 milligrams of sodium, which means each approximate 50-calorie piece has about 185 milligrams of the stuff.
Dr Pepper Sweet Cotton Candy
You may as well just scoop spoonful after spoonful of sugar directly into your mouth rather than eating this cotton candy now sold at Walmart, there would really be no difference. Fat and sodium-free, it's really just pure sugar with some artificial colors and flavors thrown in.
Palermo's Rising Crust Breakfast Pizza
Sure, a breakfast pizza may be kind of a brilliant idea, really, but eating this one is not so sharp. That's because on top of its heavy fat content, the sodium per serving is savage: there are 730 milligrams of sodium in one serving, which represents a third of your entire RDA. And remember 1/6 of the pizza is one serving. Who is going to be satisfied by that?
Read more about the best and worst products on the shelves:
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