Favorite Day Monster Trail Mix — DUMP

Munch or Dump rates Favorite Day Monster Trail Mix by Favorite Day DUMP — score 17/90.

This is a bag of candy with peanuts as an alibi. Five artificial dyes plus their lakes, hydrogenated oils in two places, and sugar repeated in every sub-component. 'Trail mix' is doing a lot of heavy lifting for what is functionally M&Ms and dessert chips.

Why this verdict

• Hydrogenated palm kernel oil and hydrogenated rapeseed/cottonseed oil — hydrogenated oils are an automatic disqualifier
• Full artificial color panel: Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2 plus their aluminum lakes
• Ingredient list blows past 18 items with sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, and dextrin stacked across sub-ingredients
• Artificial flavor in the chocolate chips on top of everything else
• The peanuts and raisins are real food — they're just outnumbered by the candy coating industry

Ingredients (12)

• Peanuts (safe) — Legume packed with protein and healthy fats.
• raisins (safe) — Dried grapes; naturally sweet, no added sugar in the raisin itself.
• Sugar (multiple appearances) (caution) — Appears in every candy sub-component — sugar is the true dominant ingredient by function.
• red 40 (avoid) — Artificial petroleum-derived dye with no purpose in a brown chocolate product; a decisive negative.
• Yellow 5 & Yellow 6 (avoid) — More azo dyes, same story — zero function beyond making candy shells pretty.
• Blue 1 / Blue 2 (caution) — Synthetic dyes; less studied than the azo dyes but still purely decorative chemistry.
• hydrogenated palm kernel oil (avoid) — Industrial hard fat in the peanut butter chips — the cheap stand-in for cocoa butter.
• hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil (avoid) — Hydrogenated stabilizer fat in the peanut butter component.
• Corn Syrup (caution) — Added sugar baked into the crust.
• Dextrose (caution) — Second added sweetener.
• Artificial Flavor) (moderate) — Lab-made flavor doing the 'creme' work.
• Soy Lecithin (safe) — Common emulsifier, generally benign in these amounts.

Healthier alternatives

• Balanced Breaks White Cheddar, Almonds & Dried Cranberries
• Southern Grove Omega Trail Mix
• Southern Grove Cranberry Almond Cashew Trail Mix
• Simply Nature Organic Chia Seeds
• Kirkland Signature Supreme Whole Almonds