The 5 Healthiest And 5 Unhealthiest Prepared Foods At Aldi

Like any other supermarket, Aldi sells a lot of prepared foods. If you're looking for a quick appetizer, lunch, or dinner, you can find anything from wraps to mac and cheese to salads to pretzel bites in its famously affordable aisles, and some of these options are well and truly delicious. Additionally, some of them are a lot healthier than you might think. Prepared foods can often get a bad rep for favoring convenience and quick flavor over quality, which can often translate into them being crammed with salt, sugar, and saturated fat, but at Aldi, the prepared items can be pretty wholesome.

Not all of them, though. Some of Aldi's prepared foods have some astonishing nutritional stats, which plunge them into unhealthy territory and make them items you really should skip. A fair few of these items nudge up against the full recommended daily allowances for sodium, added sugars, and saturated fat which, for adults following a standard diet, stand at 2,300 milligrams, 50 grams, and 20 grams, respectively. In this article, we used the quantities of these three nutrients in Aldi's prepared foods to find out whether they were healthy or unhealthy, and also looked at their ingredient lists and levels of processing, to figure out whether they were items to acquire or avoid.

Stuffed chicken breast can seem like a healthy choice, but it can often suffer from one big problem: Its filling. This filling can often turn what can be a wholesome meal into something very unhealthy, as excessive amounts of cheese, bacon, or other items are crammed into it. That's why we really admire Aldi's restraint with its Park Street Deli Broccoli and Cheddar Hand Stuffed Chicken Breast. It still fills this lean meat with Cheddar cheese, but it doesn't turn it into something that should be avoided in the process, and instead strikes a good balance between flavor and nutritional quality.

Park Street Deli Broccoli and Cheddar Hand Stuffed Chicken Breasts have just two grams of saturated fat per serving, covering 10% of your daily recommended value. With 550 milligrams of sodium in each portion, it's nowhere near as salty as some of Aldi's other prepared items. Broccoli is listed as the third ingredient here, and we love how it packs some veggies into your meal. Plus, it delivers 24 grams of protein for 140 grams of food, covering a generous proportion of the 60 grams or so the average adult should be getting daily, without providing excessive amounts of it.

Oh, dear. Clearly, Aldi decided to go big on its Kirkwood Pepper Jack, Swiss, and Bacon Stuffed Chicken Entrée, and it really shows. This prepared food is a monster, and any nutritional goodwill that Aldi might have earned by using lean chicken breast in this dish goes right out of the window with the inclusion of the other ingredients. The combination of cheese and bacon produces an extraordinary amount of saturated fat, and per serving, this dish delivers 18 grams, or 92% of your daily recommended value. 92% in one dish!

This high amount of saturated fat is quite troubling, and consuming even slightly more than that quantity regularly can lead to poor health outcomes. Saturated fats can increase your LDL cholesterol levels, which can, in turn, make you more susceptible to heart-related diseases like stroke or heart attack. This is exacerbated by this entrée's excessive sodium content: You'll be getting 1,560 milligrams in every serving, or 68% of your daily value. It also crams in a whopping 51 grams of protein per serving, which might sound good, but which may ultimately be much more than you need in a single dish.

It's easy to assume that all store-bought pasta dishes will be pretty unhealthy. These meals are often less wholesome than freshly made pasta, and manufacturers can fill them to the brim with preservatives, additives, or salt and fat to give them more flavor. Aldi doesn't do this with its Park Street Deli Spaghetti with Meatballs Meal Kit, though. Instead, it's a healthy option that also makes for a speedy dinner. Per 250-gram serving, this meal has just a single gram of saturated fat, or 5% of your daily recommended value, and 390 milligrams of sodium. That's pretty impressive, considering that meatballs can often be laden with fat, and pasta sauces can frequently taste pretty salty.

We also love that there's no added sugar to be seen in this meal kit. Added sugar is strangely common in processed savory foods, particularly those that rely on sharper flavors, like pasta sauces. Sugar can work as a flavor enhancer and to balance salty notes, but here, Aldi takes the smart route and limits both nutrients. In doing so, it produces a meal we'd enjoy just as happily as with homemade spaghetti and meatballs.

It's probably not a huge shock that prepared fettuccine Alfredo from a major retailer isn't the healthiest dish out there, but hey, we should still talk about Aldi's version. Aldi's Park Street Deli Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken Meal Kit is a product that packs a lot of saturated fat and sodium into a relatively small serving size. In each 175-gram serving, you get 7 grams of saturated fat, covering over a third of your recommended daily value, and 710 milligrams of sodium (31% of your daily value). There's also, quite surprisingly, two grams of sugar, and only 15 grams of protein per portion — when you look at how far down chicken is on the ingredients list, that part starts to make sense.

Regrettably, all of that saturated fat and sodium is not good for heart health. Both nutrients can negatively impact your blood pressure and contribute to hypertension, which can then increase your risk of poor health outcomes and associated diseases. The quantities in this meal kit could be a lot worse, but when Aldi has other similar products with far less of both, or when you can make your own fettuccine Alfredo easily and keep an eye on the sodium you add, then why would you buy this one?

Want all of the joy that chicken fajitas provide, but don't want to make them? Hey, we get it — we're frequently in that position. When that feeling strikes, reaching for Aldi's Park Street Deli Chicken Fajitas can give you convenience and flavor in a healthy package. There's a mere half-gram of saturated fat in every serving of these chicken fajitas, covering just 3% of your daily value. Each serving size is 140 grams, and while it's not fat-free by any means, the low saturated fat content and its relatively small amount of total fats (3.5 grams per serving) make it a reasonable choice.

It should be said that Park Street Deli Chicken Fajitas have 570 milligrams of sodium per portion, covering 25% of your daily value. However, if you're watching your sodium intake elsewhere, then this isn't an unreasonable amount by any means. Finally, while this is undeniably a processed food, its level of processing is lower than a lot of other prepared items out there. We're heartened by the sheer amount of whole ingredients included, and the fact that chicken, water, onions, green and red peppers, and tomatillos are the first ingredients listed.

Okay, so we don't mind saying that we were pretty surprised by this one. Wraps have traditionally been seen as healthier choices than sandwiches, even though nutritionally speaking, wraps can often have more carbohydrates and be more processed than some sliced bread. That belief should be put to bed by Aldi's Park Street Deli Italian Wrap, which is surely one of the unhealthiest items the retailer sells. Per wrap, there are 37 grams of total fats, and 15 grams of saturated fat. The latter covers 75% of your daily value in an item that weighs just 233 grams. And that's not even the worst part.

Aldi's Park Street Deli Italian Wrap has a massive 1,990 milligrams of sodium per serving, which is 87% of your daily value. After eating one of these for lunch, you'd have to eat almost entirely sodium-free food for the rest of the day if you wanted to stay within the recommended limits. This wrap falls into a broader trend of lunch items like sandwiches becoming surprisingly unhealthy in recent years, and covering the majority of people's daily sodium and saturated fat intake. If this item's anything to go by, we can believe it.

Prepared salads can be risky. You can transform a store-bought salad into something more tasty, but otherwise, they can be bland. Worse, though, if the manufacturer prioritizes flavor over health, they can taste good but undo any of the wholesomeness that you'd expect them to have. That's not true of Aldi's Park Street Deli Chickpea Salad, which is not only one of the healthiest prepared salads we've seen out there, but also one of the healthiest items you can grab in the store. Per half-cup serving, there's just a half-gram of saturated fat, and seven grams of fat in total, some of which comes from heart-healthy olive oil. There's no cholesterol, no added sugar, and only 250 milligrams of sodium, or 11% of your daily value.

Aside from all this, the ingredients themselves are impressively healthy. Park Street Deli Chickpea Salad is crammed full of edamame beans, cranberries, red and green peppers, carrots, and, of course, chickpeas. This last ingredient boosts the salad's vitamin C, iron, and fiber content, and the three grams of fiber per serving of this salad (or 12% of your daily value) is very pleasing to the eye.

If you want an Aldi appetizer that's one of the unhealthiest of the bunch (though we're not sure why you would), then Park Street Deli Pretzel Bites with Mustard Dip is the one for you. This appetizer has a frankly incredible amount of sodium in it per serving, delivering 1,820 milligrams, or 79% of your daily value, in just a few bites. This sodium content partly comes from the fact that you have to top the pretzel bites with salt halfway through cooking, and the package specifies that you need around a teaspoon of salt per five bites. While you could potentially reduce the amount of salt you put on them, we have to take the nutritional content of Aldi's products as they were intended to be eaten, and this one isn't great.

It's a shame, because elsewhere, Park Street Deli Pretzel Bites with Mustard Dip don't look too bad nutritionally. The product has 0.5 grams of saturated fat per serving, and while the three grams of added sugar in each portion aren't ideal, that's still well within the daily value. It's the sodium that undoes everything else, though, and which pushes these into unhealthy territory. You'd be better off making your own pretzel bites instead.

A lot of prepared beef dishes can be laden with fat, but it doesn't always have to be that way. Aldi proves this with its Park Street Deli Sirloin Steak Tips with Chimichurri Sauce. This dish uses lean sirloin and, in doing so, keeps the fat and saturated fat content low and the protein levels high. Per serving, these steak tips provide 10 grams of fat and two grams of saturated fat, the latter covering just 10% of your daily value. On the protein front, meanwhile, you get 21 grams in every portion. Being beef, that protein's rich in amino acids and multiple vitamins and minerals, including iron, zinc, and selenium. Not bad, huh?

If you're thinking that this product might be sneaking in some unhealthier aspects elsewhere, thankfully, it isn't. Park Street Deli Sirloin Steak Tips with Chimichurri Sauce has just 460 milligrams of sodium per serving, or 20% of your daily value. There's no added sugar and no trans fats. On the ingredients front, Aldi keeps things looking rosy there, too, with this product made up of a host of recognizable and whole items. All in all, we're pretty impressed.

Okay, so grocery store bakeries and their items aren't usually known for their healthiness, but seriously, Aldi? When you take a look at the Bake Shop Raspberry Strip Danish's nutrition, you'll wonder how anyone's getting away with this one. We're sure that this item is delicious, but that's because it's crammed full of saturated fat and added sugar. In each serving, there's 4.5 grams of saturated fat (23% of your daily value) and 15 grams of added sugar.

Now, at this point, we should mention that the recommended serving size for this item is 50 grams. That means that two-fifths of it is taken up with pure saturated fat and sugar, leaving little room for anything else. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's recommended daily limit for added sugar sits at 50 grams, other health bodies like the American Heart Association recommend aiming for significantly less. Consuming too much added sugar can contribute to a host of negative health outcomes, including a greater risk of diabetes, increased inflammation, and poor heart health. This Danish is one that you should steer clear of entirely.