The Aldi Canned Meal Dupe You Should Avoid Buying (Get The Name Brand Instead)

Aldi can be a novel experience for new customers, so much so that they might feel like they need a guide to shopping there for the first time. But part of your trip means knowing what to avoid, and Food Republic found that its canned spaghetti rings with meatballs is something you should absolutely keep out of your cart.

Amongst the nine canned foods you should avoid at Aldi, its SpaghettiOs dupe is, by far, one of the worst. While the sauce is about what you might expect from a canned pasta product (a bit bland and overly sweet), it is the pasta and meatballs that truly make this a bad purchase. The spaghetti rings are far too soft with a texture close to boiled bread that almost dissolves on contact with a spoon. The meat has no flavor and shows signs of a major burger mistake many people make: overworking the meat. As processed as they are, the meatballs have a snappy, rubbery, dense texture similar to what you might find in an MRE.

Selling for around a dollar a can, the Bon Italia spaghetti rings and meatballs are pretty much what you pay for. Though the can claims to have spice and spice extract in its ingredients, the whole mess really just tastes like processed starch, proteins, and sugary, watered-down ketchup. While not widely reviewed on Reddit, it does appear a few times in the r/sh*ttyfoodporn subreddit, with many users questioning why someone would even try it — to which a poster replied, "I'm actually into trying [sh*tty] can foods. I had not tried this one yet. I won't be trying it again."

A canned meal should always be two things: delicious and affordable. While Aldi's pasta rings and meatballs may have missed the mark on flavor, plenty of other canned goods receive great applause from social media users willing to defend their favorite choices.

Aldi's Deutsche Kügel Harvest Potato Soup is "like eating a bowl of gravy," according to one Redditor's husband – which, they clarified, was a good thing. With the original poster calling it "the best canned soup I've ever had," the post garnered plenty of other commenters chiming in with their own approvals and suggestions on how to upgrade it. From white pepper, chopped ham, and hard-boiled eggs, many Redditors found this to be a great start to a hearty meal, one they could easily upgrade to suit their own tastes.

While Food Republic rated Cento as the best canned tomato brand, others on Reddit claim that Aldi's products reign supreme. In particular, its fire-roasted tomatoes receive tons of love for those who like whipping up some Tex-Mex at home. Consisting of nothing but tomatoes, tomato juice, sea salt, and some calcium chloride and citric acid as preservatives, these little firecrackers of flavor are a pantry staple for tons of families and only cost $1.29 per 14.5-ounce can.