The 8 Most Overrated Snack Foods Of All Time, According To Mashed Staff

Americans love their snacks. In fact, a 2023 study published in the National Library of Medicine found that snacks account for around 20% of the average diet (or 95% during the college years). Now what particular snacks account for that 20% is going to vary from person to person. Some folks tend to lean towards the salty or spicy, while others want something so sugary that their teeth are at risk of dissolving with each snacking session. 

Now when it comes to good snacks and those that are met with "who eats this stuff?" opinions are as varied as the snacking choices on convenience store aisles. Being major food fans around these parts, Mashed writers have some strong opinions to what constitutes an entry into the snacking hall of fame and what is overrated junk that should never have made it past focus group testing. Let the snack bashing begin!

When it comes to snacking, it's easy to say that sweet treats reign supreme. However, those looking for savory morsels typically have an aisle to sift through as well. The meat lovers or low carbers have less options, and might look to pork rinds to fill that snack shaped void. I'll give the meat eaters their due where (some) jerky is concerned, but I draw the line at fried pork skin.

You want to know the truth about pork rinds? If you've ever worked in a restaurant that serves them, you know the process that creates a pork rind is kind of gross. Sure, the snack is keto friendly, but at what cost? The air-filled crunchy snack is the result of deep frying pig skins, and the finished product couldn't look more different from what goes in the fryer. If you wouldn't munch on strips of pig fat, you should rethink crunching on pork rinds.

Despite the ick factor this snack has, pork rinds are probably more popular than you think. The snack isn't just popular in the United States, but in Brazil, Thailand, and Latin American countries. I can accept them as a part of a cultural dish, but as a snack they are way overrated.

I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers on this one, but Flamin' Hot Cheetos are one of the absolute worst snacks. This snack is wildly popular, and I just don't get why. Not only does every brand have its own version of this spicy snack, but these fluorescent red cheese snacks have been infiltrating other food scenes as well. Restaurants have come up with Flamin' Hot Cheetos infused dishes, and everything from sushi to ice cream have incorporated the abomination of a snack food.

I have two issues with this snack phenomenon. First, snacks should not cause you pain. Why anyone would think an eye watering, throat tingling snack would satisfy any craving is beyond me. My second objection to this iteration of Cheeto is something other flavors of the brand have in common: the mess. Cheese dust is dastardly, and it gets everywhere. I don't care that the Cheetos side effect makes for a good Super Bowl commercial, a funny intermission once a year is just not worth it. The dust mutant-like red of Flamin' Hot Cheetos is even worse than its orange cousin. I like a lot of things hot and messy, but it just doesn't make sense for on-the-go snacks.

Takis: the hard, spicy, rolled-up tortilla chips inside the instantly recognizable purple bag, are a snack with a cult following. Truth be told, I find Takis to be pretty vile. I'm all for some zesty snacks here and there, but something about the flavor of original Fuego Takis is off-putting. The fiery heat and lime hits your tastebuds right away, but after a few seconds, you are left with an aftertaste reminiscent of hot, tangy vomit.

If loading up on man made chemicals isn't your idea of a good time, Takis aren't the snack for you. The seasoning contains monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed soy protein, and yeast extract, as well as synthetic dyes Red 40 lake and Yellow 6 lake. There are several different flavors of Takis, but two kinds in particular, "Blue Heat" and "Zombie," are packed with artificial additives and dyed strange colors. To get the muddy, saturated hue that is Blue Heat, Takis hit the Blue 1 lake hard. Meanwhile, limited edition Zombie Takis count Yellow 5 lake, Blue 1 lake, and Yellow No. 5 among its ingredients — the combination of which will turn your tongue the color of rotting spinach.

A serious Takis habit isn't without consequences either. In 2018, a 17-year-old girl had emergency gallbladder removal surgery after eating too many bags of spicy chips, including Takis. These chips can negatively impact your health and the taste isn't even worth it. Tempted by Takis on your next snack run? Keep it moving.

On the occasions I find myself in close proximity to Totino's Pizza Rolls, they're either wobbling on a cookie sheet ready to be pounced on by some 8-year-olds, or tossed onto a platter for an easy to please party crowd. In either situation, '90s food trend Totino's Pizza Rolls are more like glorified chicken feed than a genuinely tasty snack. These pseudo-Italian bites of boring are a resounding reminder that just because something's popular, doesn't mean it's good.

Totino's Pizza Rolls are neither roll nor pizza. From the outside, the puffy rectangles kind of resemble shrunken-down Hot Pockets. What's inside is little more than tomato paste and rubbery mozzarella that tastes like it was scraped off of an Ellio's frozen pizza. When Pizza Rolls came about in the 1960s, (they were known as Jeno's Pizza Rolls back then), their creator, Jeno Paulucci, was just messing around with fillings for the frozen egg rolls he used for his food brand, Chun King. Maybe they were better back then?

Perhaps the worst part about Pizza Rolls is trying to cook them uniformly. Whether you use an oven or a microwave, it always seems like one Pizza Roll is cold in the middle while the one next to it is bursting with molten sauce and oily cheese. If you eat a too-hot Pizza Roll right off the bat, you've burned the roof of your mouth and/or tongue before getting a chance to kind of enjoy its underwhelming taste.

So much can and inevitably will go wrong eating popcorn. Pieces near the bottom without enough butter or seasoning end up totally flavorless, annoying little bits wedge themselves securely between your teeth, your hands get messy, and worst of all, biting into an un-popped kernel is pretty much a snacking nightmare. These inconveniences might be worth it if popcorn tasted like caviar or something, but popcorn is just about as boring as caviar is delicious.

Even if unflavored popcorn isn't actually that bad for you, no one's eating their popcorn plain. And while popcorn might taste okay with an unhealthy amount of butter or seasoning, butter is better on toast and chips are a superior showcase for savory flavors — simply put, anything that tastes okay on popcorn goes better on another common snack food. Plus, while popcorn might be a movie theater tradition, any decent theater these days offers at least a couple of preferable snack options, be it a classic hot dog or a personal pizza.

Popcorn's place in the snack canon is based on vibes and vibes alone. It's surely nostalgic for anyone old enough to grow up in an era of primitive snacking innovation, and of course there are those whose movie-going experience isn't complete without it. The fact that enjoying popcorn relies so heavily on vibes and not quality is a big part of why it's one of the most overrated snack foods of all time.

Some movie theater snacks rank lower than others and if I go to the movies, you'd better believe I'm judging the heck out of anyone who voluntarily gets Raisinets. They're like the Nicholas Cage of the snack counter: You know what you're going to get, and it's going to be so laughably bad that you have to wonder if it's really just some kind of cosmic joke to see whether or not we're laughing with them or at them. Equally hilarious are the ye olde timey, 1990s-era commercials that advertise these little nightmare nuggets as being a sort of "chocolate-for-the-kids," "wholesome-for-the-parents" pseudo-health-food, and seriously? No kid is happy to get chocolate-covered raisins, on the contrary, this is why Xennials have trust issues.

The same parents giving their kids Raisinets probably hand out raisins at Halloween, and we all feel the same about those people, right? Admittedly, part of my problem might be that after owning several pet rabbits, it's impossible to think of Raisinets as looking like anything but what got left behind in their litter boxes with an impressive frequency. Still, rabbits aside, there can't be anyone who loves snacking on a bowl of trail mix and getting a mouthful of what I refer to as "obstacles."

Do you doubt, oh ye of little faith? Mix a bowl of chocolate covered peanuts and Raisinets, then play some Raisinet roulette. Which one are you disappointed to get? Is it the chocolate-covered, salty bit of deliciousness, or the mush-bomb? That's what I thought.

Oh, Hostess Brands. Did you intend to create the world's grossest processed cake snack? Nearly 100 years ago in 1930, the original Twinkie was born under creator James Dewar of the Continental Baking Company. After the purchase of the organization by Hostess, the highly-refined version of the Twinkie pastry we know and love (debatable wording here) went on to be mass-produced and popularized, ending up on grocery store shelves across the U.S. and earning the title of quintessential American sweet treat.

The why and how surrounding the mystifying favor of these overly-sweet, plastic-tasting travesties surpasses understanding, however. From the outer layer of soggy, hammy cake, to the unpleasant, sticky marshmallow filling that clings to the roof of one's mouth, ending finally with those unforgettable hints of slimy preservatives that linger in a thick film long after the unfortunate eating experience has ended, Twinkies are a supremely overrated snack that have haunted store shelves for far too long. Go ahead — try and change my mind through a mouthful of this superior-snack pretender. I'll wait.

The debate has raged for about as long as Doritos have existed: Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch? And frankly, I don't even know why it's a question, because Cool Ranch Doritos aren't even on the same playing field as Nacho Cheese. I'm not bothered by the ultra-processed list of ingredients, including MSG, that go into making the chips, given that most of them are also in Doritos' Nacho Cheese flavored tortilla chips. It's not even entirely the fact that they're neither cooling nor are they ranch-flavored (although that doesn't help the cause any). It's that everything that Cool Ranch does, Nacho Cheese just does so much better.

For example, Cool Ranch Doritos have red and green specks, which many attribute to the spicy flavor of the chips. It's true that the ingredients for Cool Ranch Doritos include tomato, garlic, and onion powders, as well as a generic "spice," but so do Nacho Cheese Doritos. The latter goes a step further and also includes red and green bell peppers in the mix. Cool Ranch includes buttermilk and cheddar cheese, both of which are also in Nacho Cheese, with the addition of Romano Cheese. So, if you've ever found Cool Ranch Doritos a little lacking, it's probably because they are.

There's no arguing with the iconic impact and impressive staying power of Cool Ranch-flavored Doritos, with nearly 40 years on the market. But in the world of Doritos flavors, Cool Ranch is wildly overrated.