Ground beef is a staple in many American kitchens. In fact, it’s so popular that Iowa State University estimated the average American ate over 27 pounds of it in 2020. Despite its ubiquity, ground beef is not the most consistent product and a large amount of subpar beef is sold by retailers across the country. In this article, we highlight five stores that have gained a reputation for selling poor-quality ground beef.
There are several ways in which ground beef can be underwhelming. Among the most common is that the meat is filled with pieces of gristle and bone. This makes eating the beef an extremely unpleasant experience, and can even result in customers sustaining injuries to their mouth and teeth. Other times, ground beef can have an unpleasant smell, texture, and flavor as the result of how and when it was processed. These issues are becoming increasingly commonplace, as grocery stores opt to buy case-ready ground beef — beef that’s prepared and packaged by suppliers before being shipped and sold at various stores — instead of hiring in-store butchers to prepare it. This is a trend that’s been developing since the turn of the millennium.
We selected the stores in this article by referring to customer reviews of various ground beef products that were posted online, and a full methodology breakdown can be found at the article’s end. But before that, let’s see which grocery stores you might want to avoid when purchasing ground beef.
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1. Trader Joe’s
While customers love Trader Joe’s ambiance, they have less appreciation for the grocery store’s ground beef. Several people have complained that some of the store’s ground beef products — sold under Trader Joe’s private label — are packed with gristle and alarming amounts of grainy fat.
One customer wrote on Reddit: “TJ’s Grass Fed 85/15 ground beef used to be our go to. About 3 months ago, suddenly, it was awful. Over the course of 2 months, we bought it 3 or 4 times and each was bad. When fried, the fat in the pan would congeal into grey, grainy, globules.”
What makes this all the more frustrating for Trader Joe’s customers is that the ground beef is not that cheap, which is surprising given that it’s owned by the same company that owns Aldi. In fact, a one-pound pack of Trader Joe’s ground beef often retails at well over a dollar more than similar products sold by Aldi. At any price, packs of gristle-laden ground beef are unacceptable, but when paying a premium, customers have every right to feel disappointed.
2. Target
While Target is known to sell some good frozen foods, the reviews of some of the company’s fresh products — Good & Gather ground beef included — do not make for pretty reading. Just about everything that could be complained about with this ground beef, is. Customers decry the amount of gristle in the ground beef, how it goes bad well before its expiration date, and even that it’s sometimes contaminated with inedible products like bone and plastic.
If this wasn’t enough to put off potential customers, several employees have written damning reports where they describe extremely poor meat handling standards at different Target locations. For example, one employee wrote on Reddit: “Pulling out and cleaning those meat shelves was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever done.” Another wrote on Reddit that they observed many of Target’s meat shelves being “covered in mold and blood.”
The combination of poor-quality products and unhygienic spaces mean that Target’s ground beef products are to be avoided. After all, no ground beef is worth risking your health for.
3. Walmart
As a company, Walmart leans into case-ready ground beef. Case-ready beef is much cheaper and simpler for grocery stores to sell, as it means the store does not have to hire a team of butchers to prepare and grind meat in-store. Instead, the meat arrives pre-ground and already packaged for sale. All Walmart employees have to do is place the packets on the shelves. However, by being made offsite, Walmart’s ground beef is less fresh than the ground beef sold by brands that grind beef in-house.
This is apparent to customers who have suggested it’s a mistake to buy Walmart’s private-label ground beef. These shoppers frequently report that the meat discolors soon after it is purchased, adopting an unpleasant, brown appearance. Others report that the beef often has a higher fat content than advertised and that it spoils well before the expiration date. To add insult to injury, Walmart’s ground beef isn’t exactly cheap, often retailing at over $6 dollars a pound. At this price, customers should at least be guaranteed fresh beef that doesn’t rapidly spoil.
There is some hope that Walmart’s ground beef will improve. The grocery store brand has plans to open a new case-ready factory that will give it end-to-end control over many of its beef products in the Midwest. Whether this translates into superior case-ready ground beef being prepared remains to be seen.
4. Aldi
Aldi is known to sell cheap meat. A one-pound packet of ground beef retails for as little as $4.29. Like many Aldi products that boast great affordability, these ground beef products are sold under the company’s own private labels. However, these ground beef products lack consistency. One person noted on Reddit: “I used to have good luck with them, but recently it’s been awful. I actually considered if I had gotten a red meat disease because the smell made me so nauseous cooking it. I tried it and gagged so long my roommate had to throw it away for me.”
Several other customers have noted how frequently Aldi’s ground beef contains fragments of bone or extremely tough gristle. A hazard for those eating it, these fragments have the potential to cause oral injuries. For example, one customer reported cracking their tooth on a piece of bone that was hidden inside Aldi’s pre-made, ground beef hamburgers. More alarmingly, a study published in the World Journal of Clinical Cases notes that the ingestion of bone fragments can lead to bowel perforation and subsequent peritonitis.
Another way Aldi’s ground beef is inconsistent is in its fat content, which fluctuates a lot. Some customers complain that the beef feels more like a fifty-fifty split of fat and lean meat, instead of the advertised ratios. This, when combined with the sometimes shocking taste and smell of the product, makes ground beef one of the products we recommend avoiding when you’re shopping at Aldi.
5. Kroger
While Kroger is often celebrated as one of the best grocery stores to buy seafood, its meat, specifically its private-label ground beef, has been dogged by negative customer reviews. The majority of these focus on how the ground beef spoils extremely quickly. These complaints come from a variety of sources, with some having stored the ground beef in the fridge, and others in the freezer. Regardless of how it is stored, these people claim that the beef often goes off before the listed expiration date. Naturally, this is an immense source of frustration for customers who have spent their money on a product that they then have to throw away.
Another source of concern for Kroger customers is a chemical smell that’s often apparent upon opening a packet of the store’s ground beef. People have suggested that this smell is from gasses pumped into the packaging to delay the beef’s spoiling. While harmless, this smell does little to whet the appetite of those who have purchased the ground beef.
Methodology
We selected the following stores based on customer reviews of private-label ground beef products. These reviews were sourced from the retailers’ own websites and other sites including Reddit. To be included in this article, the ground beef products had to have multiple negative reviews focusing on the same aspect of the beef. For example, multiple customers would have to criticize the beef’s smell for it to be mentioned in the article. Issues with delivery and packaging were not taken into account when considering which stores to include in this article.
Read the original article on The Daily Meal.