- 2 weeks ago
rader Joe’s puts its name on almost everything it sells.
While store brands, known as private labels, used to suggest poor quality, Trader Joe’s has made them cool. It has built a cult following for its seasonal products and frozen section.
But the chain keeps one big secret: who makes its products. Because the company is privately held, it’s not required to disclose its suppliers. However, there is one loophole. When a product is recalled, the US Food and Drug Administration reveals what the issue is and who made the item.
So we dug through dozens of FDA recall filings to piece together who’s hiding behind Trader Joe’s famous private label.
While store brands, known as private labels, used to suggest poor quality, Trader Joe’s has made them cool. It has built a cult following for its seasonal products and frozen section.
But the chain keeps one big secret: who makes its products. Because the company is privately held, it’s not required to disclose its suppliers. However, there is one loophole. When a product is recalled, the US Food and Drug Administration reveals what the issue is and who made the item.
So we dug through dozens of FDA recall filings to piece together who’s hiding behind Trader Joe’s famous private label.
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FunTranscript
00:00Trader Joe's has built a 13 billion dollar empire by putting its name on
00:05almost everything it sells. About 80% of Trader Joe's products are its own store
00:11brand. More than twice as many as Costco and Walmart. 50 years ago people looked
00:16at store brands as the thing you bought when you didn't have any money. Trader
00:19Joe's made them cool. Its seasonal products have become viral sensations.
00:23This pasta I bought once and had to go back and get three more. Today we're at Trader Joe's.
00:28I love Trader Joe's. I have never heard anyone recommend a store brand of any
00:35product except for Trader Joe's. But there's one thing the grocery chain has
00:42always kept top secret. Who makes its products? Because the company's private it
00:47doesn't have to tell us who its suppliers are. Except there's one loophole. When a
00:52product is recalled suppliers become public and that's happened to Trader Joe's a
00:57lot lately. Crackers recalled for possible metal pieces. Chicken salad and
01:03applesauce for potential glass shards. We dug through dozens of FDA recalls of
01:08Trader Joe's products to piece together who makes its cult classics. So how did
01:14Trader Joe's make its own name, its superpower? And what's hiding behind its
01:19famous private label?
01:25The brain behind the Trader Joe's store brand was Joe Colum.
01:29This is exactly the type of person who can make groceries a boring subject come alive.
01:35When Joe was growing up in the 1930s, the modern American supermarket, with everything sold in
01:40one place, was just starting to take shape. People are like, holy cow, all this food. This
01:46is amazing. They're running up and down the aisles, excited. They're like, housewives are fainting.
01:51But Ben Lohr, author of The Secret Life of Groceries, says for the next 20, 30 years,
01:57grocery chains began resting on their laurels, not changing much at all.
02:01Everyone was kind of basing their decision-making on what other people were doing
02:06or what had worked in the past. People were very conformist.
02:13Joe shook things up. After serving in the Air Force and earning an MBA from Stanford,
02:17he ran a chain of California convenience stores called Pronto Markets.
02:22While other grocery stores could rely on heavy foot traffic and huge sales to keep prices low,
02:27Trader Joe's was stuck with these tiny stores.
02:30But when 7-Eleven's parent company bought its main dairy supplier,
02:34he knew he had to adapt.
02:36I think he felt like he was going to go extinct with the pressure of 7-Eleven coming.
02:42So in 1967, Joe reinvented his convenience stores into a tiki-themed grocery store.
02:47He named it Trader Joe's after, well, himself, and a chain of cocktail bars that he loved called
02:52Trader Vic's. Managers were called captains, staff wore floral shirts, and the store was covered in ship-themed
03:00decor. And Joe did everything he could to keep things cheap. He sourced decorations from marinas,
03:06and cut out old-timey images, free under public domain, for his labels and newsletter.
03:12You have Joe out there as this maverick, and you have the rest of the industry kind of moving as this dinosaur.
03:22The new concept took off in California, thanks to five big bets Joe made.
03:29The first bet being high-value products. Since he was limited on space, Joe decided to skip bulky,
03:36low-value products like paper towels. And he went all in on high-value ones that didn't take up much
03:42room. Think wine, cheese, nuts, vitamins, and supplements. He loved vinyl records, film stock
03:49development. He loved the Legs Eggs, which was women's hosiery because you could put it on a rack
03:55that took up like two by two feet of floor space. Joe's second bet was creating his own store brand,
04:03also known as a private label. He couldn't match other stores' prices on big-name brands such as
04:08Kellogg's, since they bought in much larger quantities. So he found suppliers to make
04:13products under his own label. When you are private labeling something, you can negotiate with
04:20manufacturers on your terms rather than their terms. You're no longer a price taker, you're a
04:25price maker. Which meant Joe could often sell his products for cheaper than name brands.
04:31But in the 1960s, this was a huge risk.
04:36Store brands sort of had a stigma. If you were poor, if you couldn't afford anything better,
04:41that's when you bought the store brand. And so there was this idea that store brands were less
04:45than the actual name brands in terms of quality.
04:48So Joe set out to address quality, often reinventing supply chains, including Brie Cheese.
04:55Brie did exist in the U.S., but it was aged in Europe and then shipped abroad. So it sometimes got
05:02moldy on the trip over. Joe got European cheese makers to cut the aging process short, so these wheels
05:09would finish maturing on the boat ride over. That way, the cheese arrived in the U.S. fresher.
05:15Soon, Trader Joe's was the largest Brie importer in the United States. Peanut butter was another example.
05:22In the 1970s, a handful of big companies tightly controlled the peanut butter market.
05:27So it was really hard for small shops like Joe's to negotiate a low price on it.
05:32Instead of trying to beat the price today, you just slide horizontally.
05:38Into almond butter. He helped create an entire grocery category for it.
05:43Joe also reimagined canned corn. In the early 20th century, Americans viewed it as a cheap and bland
05:50pantry staple. But Joe found a family farm in Idaho that grew the sweetest corn he'd ever tasted.
05:56So he started stocking it in his stores. And it became a hit.
06:00The store has kept the packaging the same and has hardly raised the price in the last 40 years.
06:05One, it's like small shelf stable, can be sold as a premium. Two, the product itself lived up to
06:12the hype. He was talking about canned corn the way people would talk about wine.
06:15Speaking of wine, Joe figured out how to sell high quality bottles for less than his competitors.
06:20In the 1960s, California had laws that led winemakers set a minimum price for their branded bottles.
06:26It kept stores from undercutting each other. Joe realized he could dodge the rules by sourcing
06:32straight from European winemakers and getting them to set a low price for him.
06:36Then he could pass those savings on to customers.
06:40What he was a genius at was being able to differentiate his mass produced products from
06:47other mass produced products.
06:50It's not like, oh, I'm shopping here because I'm poor or I can't afford anything better.
06:54If anything, it's the opposite. It's like, let me go see what's new at Trader Joe's.
06:57Let me go find the passion orange guava wine.
07:00Joe's third bet was limiting the selection. The stores carry about 4,000 products instead of the
07:0930,000 or so in a regular supermarket. For example, at this Trader Joe's in Queens, New York,
07:16I counted nine olive oils. But at this stop and shop just up the road, 76 olive oils?
07:23And for tomato sauce, a mere 95 options for just tomato sauce.
07:29Yes. Compared to 13 at Trader Joe's.
07:33Joe removed what psychologist Barry Schwartz dubbed the paradox of choice.
07:38That's that paralyzing feeling you get when you're staring at too many options.
07:43And so you feel paralyzed, uncertain, regretful and inadequate
07:52because you have failed in what really isn't such a difficult mission.
07:55Barry says with fewer options, you're more likely to be satisfied with your choice.
08:00I think huge selections just raise everybody's expectations. If you go in expecting perfection,
08:08you are always going to be disappointed.
08:10Carrying less stuff made it easier and cheaper for Trader Joe's to manage inventory. And it also
08:16pushed the grocer to its most notable success, new and seasonal products.
08:20Now that it's finally fall, I got these pumpkin biscotti. Look pretty good.
08:30And these pumpkin-flavored JoJo's, which are similar to Oreos.
08:34The grocer releases nearly 500 seasonal items a year, dozens of which are brand new.
08:40And they've created a lot of buzz online. But because the store doesn't have space to hold on to
08:46products that aren't performing well, it constantly rotates out unpopular items,
08:52often devastating the fans of these discontinued products.
08:56Trader Joe's does a nice job of tapping into that scarcity mindset. And it creates that urgency of,
09:02oh, I need to visit the store so I can get the latest fall items before they're gone off shelf.
09:06What Trader Joe's did is they sort of made it feel curated.
09:10Like shopping at a boutique versus a massive department store.
09:14But the perfect mix of products wouldn't have mattered if Joe didn't understand his shoppers.
09:21He does start making these very deliberate decisions of like,
09:24how am I going to identify a specific Trader Joe's customer? And who is that?
09:31Joe chose as his target a college-educated Californian who didn't have a ton of money to spend.
09:37The tagline now is underpaid, overeducated, Volvo driving professor.
09:42Think about teachers, think about artists, musicians.
09:47He noticed Americans were becoming more educated.
09:51GI Bill subsidized university education for veterans returning from war in Korea and Vietnam.
09:57He believed people wanted to kind of flex their growing intelligence in the grocery aisle.
10:07Joe's final bet? That Americans would grow more curious as global travel became more accessible.
10:13Before 1950, around 80,000 a year traveled to Europe by air.
10:17But by 1970, thanks to innovations like the Boeing 747, international travel was the cheapest and fastest it had ever been.
10:28Joe believed that would make customers open to trying new flavors.
10:32And he was right.
10:34In 1970, the number of Americans visiting Western Europe alone shot up to 2.8 million.
10:40He understood exactly who a Trader Joe's customer was and he built it in their image.
10:47And he did it in the era before big data, AI, before you could just like mine all of these consumer preferences.
10:56Joe did it by driving around Southern California in his car and making note of the neighborhood.
11:01How many cars are in the driveway? What kind of kids' toys are outside?
11:04What does this tell me about the preferences of the people?
11:08She didn't get much wrong because Trader Joe's was wildly successful.
11:15By the late 1970s, Joe operated 20 locations across California.
11:21And all this caught the eye of Aldi.
11:23The German grocery chain had a similar model, leaning heavily on private label.
11:28But the two brothers who owned Aldi disagreed about whether to sell tobacco products.
11:33So they split up the company into Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud.
11:37Sud would expand Aldi into the U.S. and become one of the country's fastest growing grocery stores.
11:42Aldi Nord would go on to buy Trader Joe's in 1979.
11:47Joe stayed on as CEO for another nine years.
11:51And after he stepped down in 1988, the new leadership began expanding Trader Joe's beyond Southern California.
11:58Aldi's kept some of Joe's vision alive.
12:01There's still no advertising, no coupons, and no online shopping.
12:05The store still leans heavily on hand-drawn, quirky, old-timey designs for its packaging.
12:11If you walk around a Trader Joe's, a lot of it's eye-catching, but it's not necessarily uniform.
12:17In fact, different products have radically different typefaces, different colors, different design elements.
12:22The feeling of informality, you know, just coming to the general store to buy stuff from your next-door neighbor up the road, it really seems to work.
12:33Compare that to Walmart's Great Value brand, which marks its products with a minimalist white and blue design.
12:38Trader Joe's funky designs and exciting variety has resonated with the young, overeducated, underpaid audience of today.
12:48The chain's limited edition products have gone viral on TikTok.
12:53So moist and fluffy with a warm pumpkin spice flavor.
12:56The internet went nuts when TJ's released limited edition mini-totes for $2.99.
13:01A set of eight were listed for a million dollars on eBay.
13:05Gen Z shoppers favor private labels more than any other age group.
13:09In a recent study, 27% cited unique products as a top factor in choosing where they buy groceries.
13:16Trader Joe's has even become a popular date night spot for them.
13:20There's just so much power in the private label. It's literally their secret sauce as to why people like them.
13:27While Trader Joe's has held strong to private label, it has strayed from other aspects of Joe's vision.
13:33It added some bulky, low-value products Joe would have never touched.
13:37You'll find unflavored seltzer there. Joe would clearly say,
13:40I don't want, even as a private label, because there's no way I can compete on price on this.
13:45And it's expanded to over 600 locations across the U.S.
13:50They did not do so under Joe Colum.
13:55The supply chains he had built for a few stores in California weren't designed for nationwide expansion.
14:01A frozen pizza distributor that he just felt was making the best frozen pizzas in Southern California,
14:09they just couldn't replicate that in a national level.
14:12They had to drop this as a supplier.
14:16As Trader Joe's grew, maintaining that same level of quality across a national supply chain
14:21got harder. In recent years, the chains dealt with high-profile recalls.
14:26Several prepared foods sold at Walmart, Kroger, and Trader Joe's are linked to a listeria outbreak.
14:33Okay, meantime here, check your freezer, because there are two Trader Joe's chicken products that have been recalled.
14:37We have an important consumer alert tonight about another recall of Trader Joe's product,
14:41this sixth such recall since July.
14:44Trader Joe's has had to recall products nearly 100 times since 2016, and 2025 had the most of any year in the last decade.
14:53Recalls are common in the grocery industry.
14:57But because Trader Joe's carries so few products, and they're mostly private label, recalls erode consumer trust in the chain.
15:04It sticks in the consumer's mind. Trader Joe's is presenting this halo of niche products.
15:10You're not expecting lots of recalls.
15:13Snickerdoodle cookies, breakfast burritos, chicken sausage,
15:17acai bowls, and soup dumplings were all recalled for possibly having plastic debris.
15:23There were potential glass fragments in chicken salad and applesauce, and metal in these multigrain crackers.
15:30There have been so many of these incidents that industry insiders nicknamed the chain Recall Joe.
15:38But who exactly is making its food?
15:41Since the company is privately held, its suppliers are kept secret.
15:46But when there's a recall, the FDA has to list the product in question, where it was sold, and who made it.
15:52Rocks were found in Trader Joe's Lentil Onion Pilaf, and the manufacturer was Mama Vicky's.
16:00Some manufacturers are big companies that supply lots of other grocers.
16:04A 2008 smoothie recall linked Trader Joe's to Naked Juice, a brand owned by PepsiCo.
16:10A 2015 recall revealed Tribe, which supplies major grocers like Walmart, made Trader Joe's hummus.
16:16In 2016, a Salmonella recall uncovered the maker of Wonderful Pistachios, also supplied Trader Joe's private label.
16:25That same year, a Trader Joe's organic sweet corn recall revealed ConAgra as a supplier,
16:30the company behind major brands like Hunt's and Marie Collender's.
16:35But some of its suppliers are little-known companies, like Treehouse Foods, that also make products for other big chains.
16:41Treehouse Foods made these waffles, recalled from Trader Joe's in 2014, for possible listeria contamination.
16:51Those same ones were also pulled from Target, Kroger, Publix, Walmart, and Stop and Shop shelves.
16:57In 2019, we can see Fuji Food made sushi rolls for Trader Joe's.
17:02Those same rolls, recalled from TJ's for listeria, were also sold in 7-Eleven, Walgreens, and Food Lion.
17:10In a comment to Business Insider, Trader Joe's said,
17:13We voluntarily take action quickly, aggressively investigating potential problems and removing the product from sale.
17:19Should a recall become necessary, we waste no time.
17:22Our recall-related communications go well beyond regulatory requirements.
17:26But some of its suppliers are still a mystery, which has sparked a social media guessing game.
17:34Sartori is a big one that's just like the most obvious to me.
17:38Madeline Varela is a TikTok-famous professional cheesemonger with more than a quarter million followers.
17:45She thinks this Trader Joe's wine-soaked Toscano is just a younger version of Sartori's Bellavitano,
17:51a product carried by Walmart, Sprouts, and Whole Foods.
17:54Just the taste and aroma of it. The texture is a bit creamier, but it definitely has that same mouthfeel to it.
18:02On top of the cheese itself being very similar to Bellavitano, the flavors are also the exact same of what they carry in their line.
18:11Like this black pepper Toscano.
18:13I'm pretty sure they're the exact same thing, but obviously I can't say for sure. This is just like my educated guess.
18:20Others online have noticed similar ingredients lists between Trader Joe's pita chips and these Stacy's ones.
18:26Same with Snack Factory's pretzel crisps and these pretzel slims.
18:30Of course, we don't know for sure. All we can do is look at ingredients lists of things like these Jozo's and see how they compare to something like a General Mills Cheerios.
18:41Or you can look at the shape of the product themselves, like these animal crackers from Stouffer's and these ones from Trader Joe's.
18:47They have very similar backings to them, but not quite exact. But I could see why people look at these very similar animal cracker bodies and think that they could be similar manufacturers.
19:04But despite having products that are eerily similar to big brands, Trader Joe's can't seem to shake its struggles with quality.
19:11I've noticed quality control issues at Trader Joe's in terms of cheese. They don't have a monger.
19:20Unlike other competitors, such as Whole Foods and Kroger.
19:23They're not having anyone that has specialized training on when it's getting too ripe, what does moisture damage look like.
19:32So I will say you're getting what you pay for, 100 percent.
19:36On top of recalls and quality issues, Trader Joe's has also faced allegations that it copied product ideas from small businesses.
19:47Chitra Agarwal, founder of Brooklyn Deli, went viral when she revealed the similarities between a new Trader Joe's sauce and her achar, a staple pickled condiment in India.
19:56A lot of the recipes that we put out at Brooklyn Deli are all inspired by family recipes.
20:04I learned how to pickle from my aunts, my mom, my grandmothers.
20:09She launched Brooklyn Deli in 2014, bottling her family's achar recipe from her home kitchen.
20:14I was actually hand-making our products for the first five years, and achar is a pretty laborious condiment to make.
20:23I remember I was, like, so pregnant. We decided that maybe we should use a co-packer.
20:28Her pickle was a hit. She was already selling in Whole Foods and Blue Apron when Trader Joe's came knocking in 2021.
20:35We got an email from a buyer at Trader Joe's, and they had told us that some of our products looked interesting to them.
20:43They were intending to white-label it.
20:46That means buying Brooklyn Deli's product and selling it under the Trader Joe's label.
20:50I was excited because I shopped at Trader Joe's, and I felt like it could be a really big opportunity and a way for achar to reach more customers.
21:02I sent them samples, and then they asked for pricing, and they were saying that they liked the flavors.
21:08And then all of a sudden, we didn't hear from them.
21:12I just followed up, and they were like, we're launching another Indian sauce.
21:18I didn't think much of it.
21:19I ended up getting a DM from a customer that basically was just like, have you seen this?
21:26In summer 2021, Trader Joe's released an achar of its own, and it had the same name as Chithra's.
21:32If you go to an Indian store, you'll find that it's usually called Indian Pickle.
21:39We decided that we wanted to launch with the Hindi name achar because we thought that too many people would think that it's like a dill pickle.
21:47But she chose to brand hers in a unique way, by spelling achar with two A's to better reflect its pronunciation.
21:54What struck us was that the spelling of achar was with two A's, which was what we have on our jar.
22:02And we are the most widely distributed achar in Western markets with achar spelled with two A's.
22:09The roasted garlic flavor of Trader Joe's was just like hers too.
22:13Chithra says she created that flavor.
22:16Traditionally, garlic achar is pickled raw, so it's crunchy.
22:18So I grew up in Jersey, so I grew up eating a lot of Italian food.
22:22And roasted garlic is just something that I just, you know, I love.
22:26And I thought that maybe that would be a cool way to incorporate something from just my own upbringing,
22:32but also combining it with these Indian cooking techniques I was learning from my family.
22:37The Trader Joe's version, you could see that it had roasted garlic in it.
22:41So there was definitely similarities in that way.
22:44But recipes generally aren't protected by copyright in the U.S.,
22:48so it leaves small businesses with few options when products with similar ingredients hit shelves.
22:54The other thing that struck us was just the size and shape of the jar,
23:00which looked pretty similar to our simmer sauce jar.
23:04If we're talking to them about, like, our tikka masala, whatever, a lot of other brands bake tikka masala,
23:10so it's not such a big deal.
23:12But the fact that it was a char is that we put all of this sweat equity into just educating more and more people.
23:19It made me feel pretty depressed for people to then kind of try this inferior version
23:26and then maybe not like it and be like, oh, I hate a char.
23:30You know, that would be the worst thing.
23:32So Chithra took to social media.
23:35We wanted to make clear so that there wasn't any consumer confusion
23:39that we did not make the a char that was on Trader Joe's shelves.
23:44What did you think when you saw that post go viral and strike a chord with people?
23:48I actually, I got scared.
23:56I just, like, all of a sudden, like, started to just, like, I was, like, thinking back to that time
24:01where I, like, looked at my phone and I was, like, oh, my God, like, what have I done?
24:07We're a small brand and we don't have a lot of resources.
24:14Trader Joe's never messaged us back.
24:16Orya Abram, founder of Orya's Malaysian Kitchen, had a similar experience with her sambal,
24:28a chili-based sauce popular in her home country.
24:31The word sambal is a Malay word.
24:33It means processed chili peppers.
24:35And every household in Malaysia has its own version.
24:39That's my mom's recipe.
24:40It's literally my mom's recipe put in a jar.
24:43In 2012, it was a really cold winter and I was kind of miserable and whining at my mom on the phone.
24:52And she, in her motherly instinct, said,
24:55why don't you make a jar of that sambal that I make for you guys?
24:59And it was a 12-ounce peanut butter jar.
25:01It was, you know, I filled it and I was so proud of myself.
25:05And it tasted really good.
25:07And I thought, oh, this is going to last me, like, a month, you know?
25:10But my husband discovered it in the fridge and it was gone in five days.
25:14And I was kind of furious.
25:16But then I realized I was going to have to make more sambal.
25:19A lot more sambal.
25:20And that's how I became the sambal lady.
25:23She makes her signature sambal with fermented shrimp paste, chilies, and lime leaves.
25:29Lemongrass is more commonly used in a chili condiment than lime leaves.
25:36Lime leaves are usually used as a finishing ingredient in stews and curries or whatever.
25:43I'm the first person to put lime leaves in a jar.
25:46It's the most beautiful ambrosial flavor that you don't get from anything else.
25:54It caught the eye of a product innovator at Trader Joe's in 2019.
25:58And basically the email was, hi, I'd like to talk about your product.
26:02Would you be interested in white labeling for Trader Joe's?
26:05So it was very exciting to get that email.
26:07You know what she said to me on the phone?
26:08We order it by the container.
26:11So you're a small business owner and you hear those words, oh my God, by the container, that's thousands of jars of product.
26:20Trader Joe's then introduced her to a co-packer in California they wanted her to use.
26:24So then he said, we will be the point of contact for Trader Joe's.
26:30And so I said, oh, so I'll have no contact with them.
26:33He goes, yeah, you won't have any contact with them.
26:35The co-packer offered her a 15% finder's fee, not a cut of Trader Joe's future sales.
26:41It's not a finder situation if you ask me.
26:43I didn't find the recipe and give it to you.
26:46It's something that I created.
26:48Aurya got a team of lawyers to draft up a co-packer agreement.
26:51I sent it to him and I never heard back from him again.
26:54And March of 2021, they released their Thai-style green chili sauce.
27:04Trader Joe's sold its sauce for $2.99, less than half the price of Aurya's jar at wholesale.
27:09I think that if they had released this and called it Malaysian, it would have been too on the nose, right?
27:16Thailand and Malaysia, we share a border.
27:18Our cuisine is quite similar.
27:19In that Trader Joe's product, lime leaves were listed as an ingredient.
27:24Nobody else calls it lime leaves.
27:27I call it lime leaf.
27:29The product in the jar, the color of it looks exactly like mine.
27:34The jar is basically a squat version of this jar.
27:39I shared it on my Instagram.
27:40All my customers were like up in arms like, ah.
27:43She got a flood of sales.
27:45I don't know.
27:46It's the Trader Joe's bump.
27:47I think people in general love sort of rooting for the small business.
27:54I'm making things that my mom made for us in her kitchen in Malaysia 40 years ago and putting it in a jar.
28:02So then anyway, fast forward to 2022, they're in my inbox again.
28:08She's like, hey, we're interested in your lime leaf sambal.
28:12We'd like to talk to you about white labeling it.
28:15Having been emboldened by then, by that, I emailed her and I said, hey, perhaps now is a good time for you to put our brand on your shelves and show that Trader Joe's supports small businesses.
28:28And she wrote back to me and she said, I'm only authorized to discuss white labeling.
28:34And that was it.
28:35That was it.
28:36And I'm glad it's over.
28:39The biggest thing about it that upset me was that it was my idea.
28:45They basically took my idea.
28:46Both Trader Joe's is a char and its Thai-style chili sauce are no longer on shelves.
28:54I think people might want to look at it as like racism or colonialism or something.
28:59But I think it's because what we have is unique and interesting and exotic and fun and fresh and full of flavors that people have never tasted before.
29:10That's why they're coming for us.
29:11In response to our request for comment, Trader Joe's said it doesn't buy recipes or product concepts and it realizes its decisions not to pursue certain projects can be disappointing.
29:21I think there is a level of innocence in a lot of small entrepreneurs entering this space because they don't recognize how predatory the business can be and how few protections there are for a good idea.
29:42Trader Joe's has also put its own spin on big name snacks like Takis, Oreos, Pringles and Cheerios.
29:49In October 2025, Smucker sued Trader Joe's for its copycat Uncrustables product.
29:56Despite the similarities to name brands, Trader Joe's products can appear healthier thanks to their whimsical labels and limited selection.
30:04Supposedly, it's more natural.
30:06It doesn't have all these additives and it does look like that from the outset.
30:11The company says it doesn't allow MSG, artificial dyes like Red 40 or high fructose corn syrup in its private label foods.
30:19But as a health journalist, I'm always skeptical of what we call a health halo.
30:25I had health editor Mia DeGraff judge a head-to-head competition on nutrition between about a dozen pairs of Trader Joe's and name brand products.
30:32We have Stacey's and Trader Joe's pita chips, total fat, five grams of fat in the Stacey's, three grams of fat in the Trader Joe's.
30:46So Stacey's does have a few more ingredients such as ascorbic acid and riboflavin.
30:54So Trader Joe's, ever so slightly healthier and way cheaper.
30:58This is definitely the one to go for.
31:02Trader Joe's giant bag and pirate booty.
31:07Almost the same calories, 10 fewer calories in the Trader Joe's, same saturated fat, same total fat.
31:14We have quite a bit more sodium in the Trader Joe's.
31:18If you were just trying to quickly ascertain which one is going to be healthier for you,
31:23I would say it's going to be the pirate booty because it has less sodium.
31:28We have Biscoff and Spekulose cookie butter, the same serving size, same calories, total fat is exactly the same.
31:41They have exactly the same added sugars and then sodium, 10 milligrams less in the Trader Joe's, that's pretty nice.
31:50Health-wise, the Trader Joe's slightly edges it.
31:55We have Trader Joe's uncured pepperoni and DiGiorno thin crust, sodium, 800 milligrams of sodium in the DiGiorno's pizza and 640 milligrams of sodium in the Trader Joe's.
32:17In the Trader Joe's label, you've got things like paprika extract, you've got beetroot powder for color.
32:24Pretty much everything on here looks like a vegetable.
32:27That is different on the DiGiorno's where you've got, you know, dextrose, riboflavin as a preservative.
32:36This is an easy winner. The Trader Joe's wins.
32:40We have Joe's O's and Honey Nut Cheerios.
32:50To Trader Joe's credit, it's a really simple front.
32:55On the other hand, the Cheerios, this big banner that says can help lower cholesterol as part of a heart healthy diet, which is a real pet peeve of nutritionists.
33:05Similar calories, saturated fat is the same.
33:10There is more sodium in the Cheerios.
33:13Knowing that the plain version of Cheerios has the same amount of added sugars as the plain Joe's O's, we're looking at a tie.
33:24So now the pièce de résistance, we're going to look at ice cream.
33:29What is a serving size of ice cream?
33:32Two thirds of a cup? Not in my household.
33:35Added sugars.
33:37We have 18 grams of added sugar in the Haagen-Dazs per serving and 24 grams of added sugars in each serving of the Trader Joe's.
33:50That is pretty much your entire daily limit of sugar if you're a woman.
33:56Looking at the ingredients list, roll them around this way.
34:00We have a winner and the winner is Haagen-Dazs.
34:04The Haagen-Dazs ingredients list is so simple.
34:08It's cream, skim milk, cane sugar, egg yolks, vanilla extract.
34:14That is it.
34:15Trader Joe's, on the other hand, cream, milk, cane sugar, sugared egg yolks, natural vanilla flavor, and then a stabilizer blend.
34:26Trader Joe's sandwich cookies, pretzel slims, and cod fillets beat out the name brands thanks to healthier ingredients like unbleached flour and canola oil.
34:35While Kikamon's teriyaki sauce and Saffron Road's tikka masala take up the win for the name brand with half the amount of sugar and saturated fat.
34:43So, final thoughts on this head-to-head contest.
34:47Trader Joe's just about edged it on nutrition.
34:50And I wouldn't say that it is much, much, much healthier.
34:53At the end of the day, they're all ultra-processed.
34:56So, yeah, it's a land of ultra-processed food.
34:59If you're a consumer, you're like, oh, it can't eat dinner and it can be healthy?
35:04Well, thank God this corporate entity has figured out this impossible-solvable riddle for me.
35:09Like, I'll just check my, like, critical thinking and nuke it in the microwave.
35:15I don't think it was ever healthier.
35:17I don't think that Joe Colum ever viewed this as more than a business and a marketing decision.
35:23But this tension between image and reality hasn't seemed to slow Trader Joe's down.
35:30It's paved the way for a private label renaissance.
35:35They were the first movers in this direction, but everyone is moved towards private label.
35:40It's everything for Trader Joe's.
35:42It is a way of differentiating who they are.
35:45So there's never going to be a world where they move away from that.
36:15There go.
36:16Number two, watch.
36:17Leave this again.
36:18See you next time in theicum.
36:19Bye!
36:20למệt refuse
36:22는데요.
36:23Shazam
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36:35incredibly
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