The Aldi Brand Soup That Shoppers Can't Even Finish

Aldi has a cult following for a reason. Customers love the relatively low prices — like frozen foods for under $5 — as well as the selection of meat, fresh produce, and plenty of other staples that are nutritionist-approved. Needless to say, this grocery store chain has its act together — for the most part. Aldi offers several proprietary soup brands, like Chef's Cupboard, but the one that seems to stand out to customers and reviewers for all the wrong reasons is Specially Selected.

In particular, one soup that received poor feedback across the board is the Specially Selected Hatch Chile Corn Chowder. One thing you hear over and over from commenters is the over-the-top sweetness of this corn chowder. How much sugar is added to this soup?

Corn can be sweet, sure, but this one has 12 grams of sugar, including 8 grams of added sugar, in just one serving — which is only 1 cup. Since it's about 3 cups to a jar, the whole thing contains 33 grams of sugar. On top of that, one serving of the soup has more than 1,000 grams of sodium — nearly half the amount of sodium the American Heart Association recommends for one day. 

Ultimately, the reviews say it all. One Redditor called it "possibly the worst soup I've ever had," adding, "never in my life have I tasted a soup that's nearly candy-sweet." Another commenter on the thread agreed: "We tried it and couldn't finish it. Way too sweet for me, yet way too spicy for my wife. And it was a weird, syrupy consistency."

When it comes to reviews, it's not just the Specially Selected Hatch Chile Corn Chowder that receives a lot of flak. While it's the main target, other soups within the Specially Selected soup universe take a lot of strays. "What is wrong with the Specially Selected soups?" one Redditor asked. They went on to call the herb-mushroom soup bland and the tomato basil soup overly sweet as well. Another reviewer said the mushroom soup was sour with too much vinegar. Their soups have gone downhill," someone else complained about Aldi's soups. They said the tomato basil, in particular, has shrunken in size and tastes like chemicals. It's also overly sweet, according to reviews. We'll add that the Broccoli Cheddar soup is one of the items you should never buy from Aldi. 

Repeatedly, all we read in terms of feedback about this corn chowder was too sweet, too sweet, and too sweet. One of the more common ways to add a nice touch of flavor to any food, including soups, is to add a touch of sugar. But if you add too much, as these Aldi soups have, then you're probably just masking a bad flavor to the point of making the product unappealing. That's the case here. Aldi does so many things right. But it might be time to go back to the drawing board with a lot of the Specially Selected brand of soups.