Popular Trail Mix Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

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When you're going on a hike, packing a lunch, or even just deciding what to bring to work for your daily pick-me-up, trail mix is a wholesome snack option. In its simplest form, it is just a serving of seeds, nuts, and dried fruits. No two trail mixes are exactly alike, however, and you might find a wide range of ingredients, including chocolate candy, assorted dried fruits, and yogurt-covered raisins. Overall, trail mix has loads of delicious components within each blend, making it the perfect way to keep yourself energized.

While it's relatively simple to put together your own trail mix at home, if you find yourself in a rush or prefer to buy it premade, there are numerous brands offering a variety of mixes for purchase. However, not all trail mixes are created equal, and some brands produce much better tasting concoctions, while others might not make the cut for your next road trip. 

To simplify your decision process, we have selected a variety of popular trail mix brands and ranked them from worst to best. The next time you're looking for a good medley to add to your weekly snacks, you'll know what to pick and what should be left behind.

We'd argue that there's no such thing as too much chocolate, but when we're looking for a good trail mix, we'd rather have some variety and not just a mound of chocolate. Unfortunately for this product, we found it to be the latter. Second Nature Wholesome Medley is a nut and trail mix company that offers a variety of trail mix flavors, including Wholesome Medley, Dark Chocolate Cherry, and California Medley. Each pack contains an assortment of dried fruits, nuts, and of course, chocolate. some of the mixes are only made up of a few ingredients, while others like the Wholesome Medley variant contain a wider range of nuts and dried fruits in each pack.

Regardless of what flavor you get, you likely won't be met with a well-balanced trail mix. According to Amazon reviews, many of them contain way more chocolate bits than necessary, making them overly sweet and more akin to a dessert treat than a healthy snack. This mix may also face the issue of chocolate clumps, resulting in more of a chocolate bar-like snack than an actual trail mix. If you like sweet snacks, then this mix could make for a tasty treat after a meal, but if you're looking for a healthy and balanced trail mix, Second Nature's product might not be for you.

The next trail mix on this list is made by Kirkland Signature. You may do a double-take upon seeing the name of the brand, which is made by Costco and carries a wide range of different products. Knowing that they are a company with a wide range of items, you have to wonder if a lot of effort is put into their foods and snacks. In most cases, the foods taste alright, but in the case of this trail mix, it definitely isn't the best.

Although Kirkland Signature Trail Mix is a Costco brand, you can find this trail mix in many different supermarkets, though you may not want to seek it out. This trail mix tastes pretty average overall and is quite forgettable. A single serving contains raisins, M&M's, peanuts, almonds, and cashews, so there are more nuts than dried fruit or other ingredients, but there's nothing really special to say about any of it. The M&M's give the mix a sweet splash of color, but that's probably the best part of this snack. Overall, this is not our first choice of trail mix in any regard, but it wasn't awful — though that's not saying much.

If you're an avid snacker, then it's near impossible that you haven't heard of Chex Mix. As one of the most well-known snack mixes around, you'll commonly find it at parties, hikes, school lunches, and picnics. You can easily make your own batch of Chex Mix at home, and customize it so that it has everything you'd want in the mix. Chex Mix is certainly comparable to trail mix, though the latter tends to have more nuts and dried fruits. If you love both Chex and trail mix, however, you may be interested in this fun snack.

Chex Mix Trail Mix is a snack containing peanuts, raisins, and chocolate candies, along with the classic Chex cereal that comes in every bag. The raisins and chocolate candies are quite sweet and balance out the salted peanuts. However, according to some Amazon reviews, the product is rather inconsistent and while some packs lack chocolate candies, others overdo it on peanuts or raisins. This trail mix is a bit of a gamble when it comes to snacking, making this mix a hit or miss.

There's a lot to be said about Whole Foods Market. It may not be the cheapest grocery store around, but it prides itself on a selection of healthy organic produce and goods. The clean-eating store may have started small, but as it has expanded, so have the various products for sale. Upon entering one of the locations, you're likely to encounter an entire section dedicated to nuts, granolas, and of course, trail mixes. You can find many different brands at each Whole Foods, however, the company also has its own line of products.

Whole Food's 365 Double Feature Trail Mix contains almonds and cashews, along with sweetened sour cherries and milk chocolate peanut butter cups. The inclusion of sour cherries is rather unique when comparing different trail mixes, and they add a pleasantly tart note. Meanwhile, the chocolate peanut butter cups provide the perfect sweet and salty combination, enhanced by the other nuts. 

Overall, it's a tasty trail mix, although the chocolate peanut butter cups are prone to melting easily, so this isn't a snack that would sit well on a hot day. Other than that, this is a solid mix we would recommend.

There are few brands with a mascot as iconic as Planters' Mr. Peanut. Along with peanuts, the company has many different nut products, from cashew blends to classic trail mixes. Most of its trail mixes include peanuts, though that isn't at all to their detriment as they feature lots of other ingredients to balance out the saltiness. Yogurt-covered raisins, cranberries, M&M's, and peanut-covered candies, are just a few of the possible contents.

A serving of the Planters Sweet and Salty Trail Mix mixes the sweet flavors of fruit and chocolate candy with roasted peanuts. You might want to note that although this mix brands itself as "sweet and salty," it's definitely on the sweeter side. So if you're looking for more of a balanced mix in terms of flavors, this isn't the worst, but it isn't ideal either. Furthermore, there's the issue of the yogurt possibly melting, but since it's thrown in with loads of other contents, it isn't as big of a deal. Ultimately, Planters makes a pretty great trail mix.

Trail mixes are known for having a variety of ingredients within each serving, and extra variety is always a plus. Nature's Garden targets the desire for assortment by selling boxes containing three different kinds of trail mix in individual packs. They are easy to bring along as a daily pick-me-up when hunger strikes. 

Each of the flavors within Nature's Garden trail mix contains sweet dried cranberries that complement numerous ingredients that lean more on the savory side. From almonds and pepitas to raisins and sunflower seeds, there's a little bit of almost everything in these trail mixes. There aren't any ingredients that would melt like chocolate or yogurt, so this mix is clear in that regard. Keep in mind that this does make for a slightly less sweet trail mix. Overall, we didn't mind the lack of anything super sweet, and eating this snack made us feel healthy, energized, and ready to tackle the day.