Nalley Original Vegetarian Chili

What have I done?!

 As the weather is cooling down and the leaves are starting to change, who doesn't enjoy a hearty bowl of chili to warm you from the inside? As luck would have it, there are so many vegan chilis to be found out there, many are awesome, some not awesome at all. So where does this offering from Nalley stand? Read on to find out....

Important!!! First and foremost, I want to mention that there seems to be two different versions of this Nalley Vegetarian chili out there. There's the version that I purchased for this review that, as far as I have been able to determine, is in fact vegan. There's another version out there that contains milk! The shitty thing is, from what I've been able to find online, the labels look identical besides the ingredients. So if you are curious about trying this one yourself, make sure you double check the ingredients! Nalley's product information website is of no help on this matter. Moving on...

Buying. I found this particular can at Winco, it was only $1.18 there on special (green tag). I also spotted it at Fred Meyer for $1.29. I have to admit that I'm not terribly familiar with the brand and I was totally not expecting to find any non- meat offerings from it as I was skimming the aisles at Winco. So I don't really know where all you could expect to find it, but it seems like it should be pretty cheap where ever it's found. You can even get a case of it on Amazon.

Heating Directions

 Packaging & Prep. This chili comes in a pretty standard metal can. No pop-top though, so you best have access to a can opener. Thankfully can openers can be very cheap and portable, and I personally prefer a manual over an electric anyway.

The label offers two options for heating, stove or microwave. I went for the stove method as it doesn't really take that much longer, and I can better ensure even heating without burning. Or exploding beans. So yeah, if you're not familiar with microwaving beans, I highly recommend having something covering your dish, even if it's just a paper towel to prevent exploding beans from decorating every square inch of your microwave interior.

Ingredients and Nutrition Facts

Nutrition. Ugh. So many problematic ingredients, and the straight up nutrition panel doesn't make it seem any better.

The good: first real ingredient is beans, good ol' beans! It's only 1.5 g of fat per serving, but the can does contain "about 2" servings (math says it's just under 2 full servings in the can). So a bit under 3 grams if you're eating the whole can, as I did. Zero of those fat grams show up as saturated BUT!!!! Big but here, and I'll get to that later...
This can is loaded with protein! Math says it should be about 26 grams! Not too shabby at all.
And almost 16g of fiber for the whole can? Wow! Sounds pretty great, but that's all the good I have to say about this chili, it just gets worse from here. Much worse.

The bad. HOLY SALT BATMAN! Jeeeeeebus, over 1K mg sodium in one serving alone?! And I ate the whole can at once! Nothing like getting almost your whole day's worth of sodium in one sitting.

And the fat? Well... there's not enough to show it on the label, but looking over the ingredient list, I see hydrogenated soybean/cottonseed oil *gasp*. Any hydrogenated fats = trans fats, trans fats are very bad, but a nice lil loop hole in labeling laws (here in the US anyhow) allows manufactures to list something like fat as 0 if it's below .5g per serving. Deceptive bullshit is what I call it.
The ingredients list in general is loaded with over processed crap.

Between the good and bad.... So there's around 370ish calories for the whole can, really not bad for a whole meal. The second real ingredient is TVP, which is a bit processed, but I don't avoid it personally. I also have zero issues with MSG, but I know some people try to avoid it and this chili contains it straight-up and in various other forms.

While this Nalley chili does have a few pluses nutrition-wise, I would never call it healthy overall... honestly I would just simply call it garbage.

It plopped out of the can just like this. It even looks slimy. 

Noms. So does this salt bomb make up for things in the flavor departmet? Short answer is a most definite NO. Everything about this chili is a bit off. Well, except the beans, those tasted fine.

Despite very high sodium content, this oddly did not taste salty to me at all. If anything, it was a tad on the bland side. The flavor of it just did not say chili to me, I'm honestly not sure how to describe it, but I didn't care for it at all.

And then there was the overall texture *shudder*. It had this slimy-ness to it that was very off-putting. It almost seemed oily but I can't blame it on that thanks to the very low fat content. So I have no idea why it was slimy but it was. Kinda like bean water from canned beans.... could they really have relied on canned bean water to get an oily texture to the product?! I mean, the first 2 ingredients are water and beans! I'm seriously just figuring this out as I am typing this.

Bottom Line. I feel like they just took a can of beans, added some TVP, a smidge of tomato paste and a bunch of other garbage and decided to call it chili. This shit is an insult to chili. If you need something super cheap and convenient to eat and this is the only decent vegan option you can find, by all means get it, but otherwise just make your own! A can of beans, a can of tomatoes and some chili powder is all you need to make your own cheap chili and it will taste infinitely better than this swill. Not to mention it would be healthier too.

Needless to say, I will never buy this again. I don't know who Nalley is trying to appeal to with this product, but it's disgusting and they should be ashamed.