There’s definitely a time and a place to shop at Walmart, and taco night is unfortunately not one of them. Walmart continues to be the largest retailer in the world, knocking Amazon into second place with nearly double its annual sales. While the supercenter offers a wide variety of products at reasonable prices, not all food items pass the test of quality and cost-effectiveness. Given these factors, shoppers say you shouldn’t buy ground beef at Walmart.
Ground beef is an extremely popular staple in most American households and is used in numerous recipes in many different cuisines. As for Walmart’s ground beef products, the retail giant has a history of offering inferior products at a surprisingly high price by Walmart standards, so you’re much better off buying the product at other grocery stores.
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If you buy ground beef at Walmart, you don’t really save much money
Walmart has a reputation for offering its customers bargain prices on necessities like groceries, but a simple math shows that’s not always true. Lean ground beef at Walmart averages between $5 and $6 per pound. The exact price may vary by location, but most of Walmart’s competitor grocery stores are slightly cheaper per pound. According to Costco’s website, Kirkland brand lean ground beef costs $5.20 per pound. This very slight price difference between the two stores is surprising, given Kirkland’s reputation as a top-notch choice for fresh-tasting produce. And Costco isn’t the only store that beats Walmart’s ground beef in more ways than one. Aldi even reports that it offers cheaper, higher-quality beef than Walmart.
It’s also worth noting that quality plays a big role in what’s best for the consumer. Often, shoppers are willing to spend a little more money on a product they know is high quality and fresh. Many customers shop at Walmart because of the low prices, not necessarily the high quality products—Walmart has been criticized over the years for its not-so-fresh perishable foods. But when a product like ground beef is not only low quality but also just as expensive, if not more, than other grocers, there’s little that can convince Walmart shoppers to put ground beef in their carts.
Walmart customers advise against buying the minced meat tubes
Before you buy any more meat from Walmart, heed the warning from other Walmart customers who have had less than great experiences with the store’s products. According to a Reddit thread, one user is urging customers to “stay away” from the ground beef tubes on Walmart shelves. Another commenter warned, “Walmart ground beef doesn’t taste good. Be careful.” One customer in the thread had an experience so bad that he felt physically ill, writing, “I almost gagged. It tasted so awful I checked to see if it had gone bad.”
Not only have shoppers reported strange tastes and concerning textures, but there was also a massive recall of Walmart’s ground beef in 2018 that turned many fans against the product altogether. NBC reported in 2018 that the company that supplied Walmart with many of its ground beef products recalled 6.5 million pounds of beef after the CDC discovered a salmonella outbreak linked to its products. This wasn’t the first (and probably won’t be the last) time Walmart has had issues with the safety and quality control of its food. If you’re looking to make meatloaf or burgers tonight, you might want to head to another grocery store.
Read the original article on Daily Meal
