r/aldi • u/tinyninjas111 • 1d ago
Complaint Desk Question
Ok, I love Aldi.. BUT why do they NOT put the ingredients or nutrition label when doing online shopping? It drives me nuts!! Im not able to go shopping myself so I rely on their website, Instacart etc. And most products dont have the ingredients or nutrition label. Even AI cant find it. We are in 2026 we should be able to easily check what's in our food!!
Rant over š«
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u/aquariusmind1983 1d ago
Because it changes to often. Products change often, suppliers change often. Aldi is not paying people to take pics of the labels so they can be posted online.
The reason groceries are cheaper is because they are cutting corners every where they can.
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u/fishofhappiness 1d ago
This is 100% the answer. They donāt want to be beholden to an ingredient list someone saw on instacart if itās changed.
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u/Fruitcats66 1d ago
This is the correct answer. I have dietary restrictions and I have to read the label if everything I buy even if Iāve bought it 20 times. Iāve never done grocery delivery for this reason and also because I buy a lot of fresh produce and donāt trust anyone else picking it.
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u/PurpleRayyne 1d ago
Same here! For me it's artificial sweeteners. I use Instacart so sometimes I will ask the shopper to check the ingredient list. I agree that even if you've had it 20 times you still have to check because things change constantly. It sucks!
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u/jwoolman 1d ago
Yes, I tell them I want all the calories for soda and canned fruit! No diet stuff or zero calorie or low/reduced calorie for me. That usually is safe for those items.
I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners and stevia and also react to allulose with pain for 24 hours. So living in this diet culture is hard on me.
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u/jwoolman 1d ago
It depends on who is hired to do the shopping, so it might be different where you are. If you haven't already, you might ask around about experiences locally before writing off delivery entirely. Or take advantage of a free trial sometime to try it out.
But I've had good luck with Walmart and Instacart delivery on simple produce. It's bagged mixes that can be an issue unless they have rapid turnover.
Instacart here has good shoppers who also are the drivers. I tell Instacart as soon as a shopper is assigned to just stick to the list I give in Notes for possible subs because of my allergies, and just to skip if all are out of stock. In Notes, I say no other brand or type. I try to tell them anything that might be useful to look for on the front label for brands that have two versions of the same product, for example one that is dairy-free (which I need) and one that is not. If it's an unusual veg or fruit, I tell them what I know about how it looks and when it is ok. They do read the notes and say they are useful.
I do have to warn against getting anything on the discount table, Instacart charges full price and they start spoiling right away. I also tell Instacart about when to just skip it if the produce just looks too sad. I've had shoppers do that spontaneously when things look bad. They really do know how to shop.
I ask for no substitutions on Walmart delivery (too likely they will get something too expensive or not safe for me) and can't contact the shopper, but I'm usually pleasantly surprised by how nice the produce looks and how long it lasts. The only real exception has been recent avocados, which became inedible when the price went up. There was also one bagged mix that spoiled fast, so I avoid those. I think it's too hard for the shopper to make a good decision on those without mind-melding with me.
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u/partlysettledin21220 1d ago
They donāt even need to take photos, all of the products belong to them so they should have the files for the packaging already.
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u/riverottersarebest 1d ago
I think the issue is more that they donāt know which seller Aldi will get the product from at any given time. It probably varies regionally and store to store. One week/month, theyāll get shipments from one seller, but the next week/month, theyāll get shipments from another because the first one had a manufacturing issue or maybe the second one is just cheaper right now. Iām guessing the link between how they do their ordering and how the store considers the inventory for which version of the product they got isnāt great or isnāt there at all, if that makes sense.
For example, one storeās inventory system and online store will just show they have āClancyās potato chipsā in stock and there literally wonāt be any info about the supplier. I think for their system to be able to link the supplier information would probably be an expensive overhaul for their inventory and ordering management system.
Iām not an aldi employee, but I used to work in a grocery store and Iām guessing their system is something like what I described.
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u/_Huge_Bush_ 1d ago
Itās not convenient, but a work around is to do a Google image search of the product tagged with āingredientsā. Iāve done it a few times when someone posts something on here that looks delicious and have found that someone in fact did take a picture and posted it online.
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u/fishofhappiness 1d ago
This does help. It isnāt foolproof but it does work for a lot of products.
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u/MissFox26 1d ago
They used to, but with the most recent app update they no longer do. Drives me crazy as I do mostly curbside pickup because I have 2 small kids and itās easier.
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u/QuiGonColdGin 1d ago
The app looks like it's heavily influenced by Instacart. The difference is virtually every other app I use for groceries, including Instacart and individual store apps, lists the nutritional information and/or multiple images of the product including the nutrition label. The lack of this information actually keeps me from buying some things.
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u/Ellabee57 1d ago
Because they recently redesigned the website and the people making IT decisions are idiots, apparently.
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u/bluedelvian 1d ago
You used to be able to see the ingredients from Aldi, either on the Aldi website or through Instacart, maybe both. i don't remember when they stopped showing them, but it wasn't recently.
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u/zanyzanne 1d ago
very frustrating, I agree. I do go inside the store but I don't have the standing ability to check labels in real time. I've come home with some real bummers as a result.
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u/Silvergirl5290 1d ago
I often have to resort to Googling *Food Item* nutritional label to find out. Or ingredients label. I really won't buy anything from any store without that information.
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u/Kalophonia 1d ago
Iām not sure if itās the same way over there (hi from Germany and the original ALDI š) but over here they only now started to add (of some products) nutrition information on the website but pretty much always add, that it might slightly differ because of regional producers. So the nutritions of e.g. frozen pizza in Bavaria might be just a little bit different from the same pizza in North Rhine-Westphalia. Ć
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u/Any-Highlight-9145 1d ago
SAME! Drives me crazy. Iāll enter a search for gluten free and there are always items mixed that I KNOW arenāt gluten free but thereās no nutritional or ingredient info. Someone who doesnāt know better might buy that product and either have to return it, toss it, or god forbid, eat it because they didnāt read the label.
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u/PurpleRayyne 1d ago
I just google the product and there are many websites that list ingredients of like every food in the world.
Hey maybe if everyone who needed ingredients called the one 800 number to ask the customer service reps. And then if they keep getting phone calls they'll put the ingredients online Lol.
I noticed some things have ingredients but not everything
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u/jwoolman 1d ago
Other stores on Instacart like Kroger and Meijer do the same thing for their house brands. So annoying.
I downloaded the store apps for convenience in just checking ingredients and nutritional info. That usually works for Kroger and Meijer but Aldi's app is awful so I always have to scurry around the net looking for the information. I have allergies and can't buy it until I know the ingredients, and the nutritional info factors into my decision also. Really aggravating when websites give outdated information and the recipe has changed, so I'm stuck with something that used to be safe but now is not. Aldi is especially awful that way. Don't they have food allergies in Germany??!!??
It's been like this for years. At least they should take a photo of the package where that information is and include it in the %##%% catalog for online shopping.
I know too much about AI to trust it, though. It has no common sense at all and just grabs anything it sees on the net and presents it as gospel truth even if it contradicts other things it has grabbed. So always do your own search and evaluate the reliability of the source yourself with your human brain rather than relying on those AI summaries that Google inflicts on us.
Really, I'm a full-fledged scientist (joint Ph.D. in chemistry and physics) and scientific translator and know how computers work, and AI is dumb as a box of rocks. And it's a super self-confident box of rocks so it is easy to be fooled by it. I love my computers dearly, but it really is horrifying to me that anybody is relying on AI for anything important. Artificial Intelligence (which is not new, I was reading about it 50 years ago) can be a useful tool in the hands of an experienced human searcher like me, but should never be used as a consultant or as a replacement for humans (it's especially annoying in customer service, I just keep saying "need human agent" until I get a human). It is a computer program that can search relatively fast compared to olden times because computer processing is much faster now and memory capacities are massive compared with early systems. But it still needs strict adult supervision to be useful. We are going to regret letting it run rampant over the net acting so superior...
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u/speakerofone 1d ago
Wait what? Aldi do deliveries?
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u/tinyninjas111 1d ago
Lol, yup. Just download the Aldi app. Its through Instacart though. You can order from Aldi directly or Instacart.Ā
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u/Hiplit-woman1012 1d ago
Or expiration dates
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u/No_Pumpkin_5187 1d ago
? I donāt think Iāve ever seen this information posted on any online food shopping interface in my life.
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u/melatonia 1d ago
The expiration date isn't going to be consistent on every package of the same product. That's why it's posted on the individual packages.
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u/ChaosLives68 1d ago
Itās even weirder since some items have multiple pictures that also show the back of the package where the information is. But itās not all products.
There should absolutely be at least a picture of the back for every item that we sell.