The Nostalgic Canned Pasta You Should Really Avoid Buying

While nostalgic food can conjure up memories of childhood and simpler times, it can be more than a little disappointing when a childhood favorite doesn't quite hit the same as an adult. While staples like peanut butter and jelly and grilled cheese may never go out of style, some nostalgic foods are better left in the memory bank rather than the dinner table.

We tried and ranked popular canned pastas, and SpaghettiOs original canned pasta ranked last on our list. While SpaghettiOs have been a childhood favorite and pantry staple since 1965, the "neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon" didn't evoke warm and fuzzy feelings for us. SpaghettiOs may sell more than 150 million cans each year, but we won't be picking them up again any time soon.

While SpaghettiOs is, in fact, a canned pasta, it seems to be pasta in name only. Between the mushy noodles and too much sauce, what we found is more akin to soup. Upon tasting it, we were instantly hit with a sauce that was way too sweet — each can has 22 grams of sugar — and simply overwhelming compared to the amount of noodles.

Perfectly round SpaghettiOs pasta may have left us feeling disappointed, but the other varieties of this kiddie staple gave us more hope for canned pasta. In our rankings, SpaghettiOs canned pasta with chicken meatballs and SpaghettiOs canned pasta with meatballs finished first and second, proving to be much more enjoyable.

The combination of mushy noodles and sugary sauce didn't do much for our taste buds, but the addition of meatballs is a huge upgrade. The chicken meatballs in particular were tangy, flavorful, and the perfect size when paired with the familiar round noodles. They also helped cut through the sugar-rich sauce and added a welcome texture compared to heavy sauce and mushy pasta.

This addition also helped SpaghettiOs canned pasta with meatballs. We found the unappealing soupy texture of original SpaghettiOs was eliminated by adding meatballs. To us, they made a simple can of SpahettiOs feel more like a complete meal rather than an appetizer. While the chicken meatballs get the number one nod for flavor, the bite-sized beef meatballs are still an upgrade from the simple pasta-sauce combo.