Opinion: If You’re Trying to Eat Better, Avoid This Aldi Aisle

EDITOR’S NOTE: Like all posts on Aldi Reviewer, this piece is the opinion of its respective authors. Also like all posts, comments are welcome, although we ask users to be mindful of our Community Guidelines.

There is a lot that we like about Aldi. The prices. The efficiency. The products that are surprisingly good in quality. The limited buy non-food items that surprise us each and every week. If we hated Aldi, we probably wouldn’t make for very good Aldi writers.

But we’re also not a fansite. This isn’t one of those places where you’ll get shameless fanboying / fangirling over all things Aldi. If we like something at Aldi, we’ll come out and say it. If we don’t like something at Aldi, we’ll come out and say that, too. The one thing you can count on from us is our honest opinion.

Everyone has to make their own decisions about how to eat. As one person once remarked, what we eat is a matter between us and our doctor. If you happen to be one of those people who wants to eat healthier, Aldi has a wide variety of offerings to help you get there.

On the other end, Aldi sells plenty of food that is less healthy. Just about every grocer does. “Junk food” is highly lucrative for supermarkets, as evidenced by the large quantity of sugary drinks, carb-loaded snacks, and sweets that take up considerable grocery store real estate.

Aldi has those pitfall areas. In our years of writing about the store, there is one location in the store that, in our view, seems more dangerous than the rest. And it’s here:

It’s the Aldi Find food aisle. The limited food buys at your local Aldi can be some of the more unhealthy foods the grocer stocks.

That’s not to say that all Aldi Find foods are unhealthy. Not at all. Aldi sometimes will stock some terrific health foods, especially during the New Year but also at other times. We’ll spot some things under, for instance, the Simply Nature and Whole & Simple private labels that are good catalysts for a better diet. We even recently spotted a breakfast skillet under the Breakfast Best private label that was pretty healthy.

However, we’ve been doing this long enough to know that, more often than not, the Aldi Find food section, as tasty as it is, is also a minefield of foods that you probably would rather not look at the nutrition labels for.

During an early summer 2024 visit to the store, here’s what we saw on the room temperature Aldi Find food shelves:

Aldi offered lots of chips, plenty of sugar, and all around indulgence food.

Here, by the way, was the Aldi Find frozen food section:

Most of this freezer is either high-carb items (think pizza) or a deluge of desserts. Again, there are some exceptions, but this is the rule. While we really like the food that shows up here, we’re the first to admit that it’s typically ultra-processed and filled with things that don’t necessarily correspond to a healthy diet.

To be fair, it wasn’t far away from the 4th of July, but even in non-holiday times, there is plenty of this kind of thing on the Aldi Find food shelves. And let’s be honest: there are enough holidays — both federal and Hallmark — on the American calendar that Aldi finds excuses to put out celebratory food all year long.

I went back a month later, at the end of July, and it was basically more of the same:

This brings up another problem: it’s a limited-time shelf. People can be motivated by scarcity. In other words, when we think something is about to sell out, we might feel more pressure to get it while supplies last. That’s why you see “act fast!” one-liner ads or “call in the next 30 minutes and you’ll get…” in commercials. The fact that Aldi Finds could be gone tomorrow can make them a bigger temptation. That’s not automatically bad, but it does mean shoppers looking to eat healthy should be aware.

Closing Thoughts:

Aldi does a great job of serving all kinds of foods given its limited inventory. And it’s made a decent effort to improve its offerings of foods that are less processed and healthier. If you’re seeking a better diet, Aldi can help.

At the same time, Aldi also stocks plenty of things that are not as healthy, including foods high in fat, sugar, and sodium. We think that is most apparent in the Aldi Find food section, where we frequently see large numbers of higher-carb snacks, fatty and sodium-laden entrees, and sugary desserts. If you’re trying to do better by what you eat, the Aldi Find food section is one potential pitfall to be aware of.