‘Rule of thumb’: Man shops for Costco Holiday Mix. Then he notices something on the back of the bag
This man is skeptical of a bag of candy from Costco after seeing the ingredient list. Turns out, it might not be as big of a deal as he thinks.
In a viral video with more than 345,000 views, TikTok user Danny Jones (@_dannyjones) called out a holiday snack mix for its ingredient list. But he may not have thought of the full context.
Picking up a 1.5-pound Barton's Holiday Mingle Snack Mix bag, he turned it around to show the lengthy ingredient list.
What's up with this Costco holiday mix?
"Rule of thumb. If it's got more than 100,000 lines on the ingredients list you can't get it," he said.
Jones is apparently insinuating that the bag of candy is full of highly processed food. Most candies are highly processed, so he's right there, but the reason for the long list is more straightforward than he might have been thinking.
"A lot of those ingredients are repeated because they have to list them for every single ingredient that's in there. There are 10 items in the mix, so that's 10 items worth of ingredients," a commenter pointed out. (We counted nine items, by the way.)
"That’s only because it’s a snack mix with multiple foods inside and that is listing the ingredients of EACH of the mix pieces," another added.
What's in the mix?
While the mix does not seem to be available on the Costco site, we found that BJ's sells it for $12.65, and Walmart has it for nearly 20 bucks. Here's all that's in the mix, according to the product details:
- Dark chocolate pretzels with sprinkles and white drizzle
- Milk and dark chocolate caramel corn with almonds
- Milk and dark chocolate mini peanut butter cups
- Milk chocolate pretzel bites
- Milk chocolate nonpareils
- Mini chocolate sandwich cookies
- Red gems
How to read an ingredient list
A product's ingredients are listed by quantity from highest to lowest, so the first ingredient will be what there's the most of, and it'll descend from there.
"Try looking for products that list whole foods as the first three ingredients and be skeptical of foods with long lists of ingredients," the health site stated.
Does less ingredients mean an item is better?
A shorter ingredient list doesn't make an item good or bad but it can help you understand how processed the food that you're buying is.
Healthline stated that an ingredient list with more than two or three lines "suggests that the product is highly processed."
What are the reviews?
It seems Jones may have dodged what some people are saying is a mediocre holiday snack. In a Reddit thread dedicated to the holiday mix, a person said they felt "ripped off" by the image on the bag, saying that it's not an accurate description of what you get inside.
Instead of having an even mix of each candy, there were about three red chocolate gems, the milk chocolate peanut butter cups were comparable to chocolate chip on size, the dark chocolate cups were nonexistent, and the Oreo imitation cookies were much smaller than advertised on the bag.
"So, sure it is edible and all quite tasty but I am still put off by the bait and switch with the packaging, so FYI temper your expectations," the originator of the Reddit thread said.
Another person added that their bag was mostly "crappy chocolate-covered popcorn and miniature Whoppers" and compared the quality to something you'd buy at the Dollar Store (though the Dollar Store can have its own hidden gems).
"Anything 'Holiday' and most things 'Mix' are disappointments. If it were good, it would be year-round, and anything "Mix" is super heavy on whatever is cheapest. Them's the rules, pretty much by definition," a person added.
But another person had a completely different experience with the snack mix. They said they ate the entire thing in one sitting.
@_dannyjones Say no to essay ingridents lists!!! #costco #organic #ingredientsmatter ♬ original sound - Danny Jones
The Daily Dot reached out to Jones for comment via TikTok direct message and comment. We also reached out to Barton's parent company via email.
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