10 Unhealthiest Store-Bought, Bagged Popcorn Brands

If you and your family are trying to make healthier decisions, it's no secret that coming up with delicious, satisfying snacks can be tough. There's a ton of processed treats out there, the snack aisle at the grocery store is lined with an almost overwhelming number of options, and there's only so much time you have to check labels, right? Snacking would be straightforward in a perfect world, but our world is anything but perfect.

Fortunately, there's popcorn — which is widely hailed as a great choice for healthy snacking. And it is! Although popping your own popcorn is definitely something you can and should do, it's not always easy to do, particularly if you're in the office or on the road. Even when you're home, there are times you just want to get the movie started, and in that case, bagged popcorn can be perfectly legit.

Like other snacks, there's a ton of options out there for bagged popcorn. White cheddar and caramel corn have both been a staple of bagged popcorn for a long time, but these days, there are almost as many choices to be made for popcorn as for chips! Not all are created equal, though, and it turns out that just because it's popcorn, that doesn't mean that it's a healthy snack. With that in mind, let's take a look at some of the most unhealthy brands and which brands come with not only popcorn, but a surprising amount of salt, sugar, and even fat.

Lance is a snacking staple, and between the crackers, nuts, seeds, and popcorn, it's all covered. Should these snacks be considered a healthy option? Not exactly, and let's start with the Movie Theater Butter flavor. A 2.5-cup serving has 160 calories, 11 grams of fat, and a whopping 250 milligrams of sodium. Considering that the American Heart Association suggests we should all be aiming for an ideal 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, that serving of popcorn is going to take a huge chunk out of that, without giving the vital nutrients that go along with other kinds of foods.

The Hot Cheese Popcorn is worse when it comes to sodium. The same size serving has 150 calories and 9 grams of fat, and 320 milligrams of sodium, making this one salty snack. While the White Cheddar might seem like a better option, it's really not. A smaller serving size — 21 grams, as opposed to 28 grams of the other two — has 120 calories, 8 grams of fat, and 220 milligrams of sodium. 

And that's another great example of how product labels can be tricky: It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume Lance would list the nutritional values by using the same serving size. If you're eating two cups of Movie Theater Butter popcorn, it's not unreasonable to think you'd be eating two cups of White Cheddar, too — but that's not how the labels read. (And there are more words that show up on food labels that are red flags.)

Admittedly, this one is kind of a no-brainer. Popcorn is healthy, but when you add Snickers, M&Ms, Twix, Oreos, Fruity Pebbles, and Butterfinger pieces to it, things go sideways pretty quickly ... even if it does sound like a brilliant idea. Let's just take some highlights, starting with Snickers. Why? We found it's one of America's favorite candy bars. This popcorn form of the country's favorite has 150 calories, 9 grams of fat, and while there's a completely reasonable 15 milligrams of sodium, there's also 12 grams of added sugars — about a quarter of what you should be getting in a day. And that's all served up in a relatively small 1.25-cup serving. 

Twix is another candy favorite, and the Twix variety is pretty similar as far as nutritional values go. How do the cookie-inspired popcorn stack up? Strangely, they're also pretty similar: The Oreo popcorn is measured in the same serving size, and it has slightly less fat and slightly more sodium.

So, here's a question: How does that stack up against actual Oreos? Three Oreos have 160 calories, 7 grams of fat, and 135 milligrams of sodium. While we know that there's no wrong way to eat an Oreo (although Oreo itself says that yes, there is a "best" way), expecting it to be made healthier by popcorn just isn't going to happen. Sorry! While this is definitely a way to satisfy a sweet tooth, moderation is still key.

There are several lines of popcorn sold under the Sweet Chaos label, and it definitely lives up to the name. These varieties are pretty great if you're looking for something outside of the norm, healthy isn't really too much of an option.

Let's look at a sampling of the standard sorts of flavors, like Jalapeño Blue Cheese. Sounds incredible, but a 2-cup serving comes with 180 calories, 15 grams of fat, and a whopping 400 milligrams of sodium. That's way more than is included in the Sea Salt, which has 240 milligrams of sodium in a 3.5-cup serving. And that? That's a great example of why reading labels is important: If you thought getting the jalapeño flavor was making a better choice than the one with "salt" literally in the name, you'd be mistaken.

Sweet Chaos also has a line of drizzled popcorn, and if you'd assume that the Cake Batter drizzle isn't a healthy choice, you'd be correct. With a serving size of just over one cup, you're getting 150 calories, 8 grams of fat, 65 milligrams of sodium, and 14 grams of added sugar. The other drizzled flavors aren't that much better or different, and strangely, for the peanut butter cup variety those numbers are included in a serving size of 1.25 cups. This might be a pet peeve, but reading labels at the store and comparing nutrition between varieties of the same brand shouldn't require a calculator and head math.

Sure, we love Trader Joe's. Who doesn't? They're literally everything that anyone could want in a grocery store, and when it comes to snacks, the fun flavors of popcorn you're likely to find on the shelves are tantalizing, without a doubt. However, Trader Joe's reputation doesn't mean that everything that's on the shelves is a good deal, a great buy, or a healthy choice — and that goes for the Trader Joe's brand Movie Theater Popcorn. 

While "Movie Theatre Popcorn" should arguably be a clue that it's going to come with some unwanted fat, calories, and salt, this goes above and beyond. In this case, a 2-cup serving has 160 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 200 milligrams of sodium. Open Food Facts actually gives this a "D" rating, citing things like high salt, fat, and saturated fats.

Other popcorn varieties from Trader Joe's hover around the same values. Popcorn Pickle has even more sodium — 310 milligrams — while the White Cheddar popcorn is slightly higher in calories. Values for the White Truffle look similar, but a smaller serving size means that this one's a little deceiving at-a-glance. The best bet? Piquant Popcorn, which still doesn't come close to the air-popped popcorn you make in your own kitchen, but isn't as terrible as some of the other options. (Now, take a look at some of the unhealthiest foods that are on offer from Trader Joe's.)

Pop Daddy is another company that puts out some fun varieties of popcorn, and we can totally get behind thinking outside-the-box. Unfortunately, some of those varieties come with more than you might be bargaining for if you'd like to try something different. Take the Dill Pickle: One 2.5-cup serving comes with 120 calories (which isn't bad), 6 grams of fat, and a shocking 430 milligrams of sodium. That's almost a third of what the American Heart Association says should be the ideal sodium intake for an entire day, so that's some food for thought.

The Smoked Gouda isn't much better, and even though the serving size is slightly bigger, that doesn't really make the 350 milligrams of sodium that much healthier. The Buttery Caramel Corn has yet a different serving size of two cups, which includes 120 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, and 210 milligrams of sodium ... as well as 18 grams of sugars, which is about 35% of your daily recommended intake.

And here's the thing. Even the Original variety has 140 calories, 8 grams of fat, and 196 milligrams of sodium in a 2.5-cup serving size. That's with no fun flavors, no unique tastes, just ... popcorn. The bottom line, then, is that it's much, much healthier to pop your own than it is to opt for the shortcut that these brands are offering.