Skip This Grocery Chain Ground Beef That Smells Like Iron Even After It Cooks

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Good old reliable packs of ground beef don't vary much from store to store, unless you shop at a more upscale grocer known for higher-quality products. Whole Foods is one chain that may come to mind, but surprisingly, we have bad news about one of its store-brand meats. In a taste test to figure out which Whole Foods meats to buy and which to avoid, our taste tester found that the 365 By Whole Foods Market Ground Beef had an off-putting, iron-like taste and smell that spoiled the eating experience.

While the label of Whole Foods' 365 ground beef boasts that it's hormone and antibiotic-free, and the meat certainly looks fine in its packaging, unwrapping it instantly unleashes a wave of metallic odor. This actually isn't a red flag in itself: Most raw ground beef smells a bit like iron, and while the scent may intensify the older the meat gets, it's not one of the warning signs that your ground beef has gone bad. However, the smell made Whole Foods' ground beef downright unappetizing — and if it meant the product was a bit old, that's not exactly wonderful, either.

The real bummer is that cooking the beef didn't eliminate the smell. In fact, our tester could taste the metallic notes in each bite, though they weren't as strong as when the beef was raw. This product wouldn't be our first choice for our favorite ground beef recipes, especially not at the average price of $7.49 per pound.

It's normally not okay to cook ground beef that smells a little. Any scent other than iron — especially sour or rank notes — means you should toss ground meat or return it. Luckily, our taste tester's Whole Foods 365 ground beef wasn't spoiled, but the product does seem to have other quality control issues. Customers have reported finding an alarming amount of bone fragments in the meat, while others say the beef is full of tough gristle. "Whole Foods should be ashamed to put their brand on this. Even at reduced prices it's a waste of money," wrote one such customer in an Amazon review. 

As for other risky buys from the chain, Tasting Table's taste tester found its mild Italian pork sausage to be even more bland than the descriptor would suggest, and apparently, the hot version is equally underwhelming. Don't write off Whole Foods' butcher counter yet, though. When you need ground meat, our taste tester would highly recommend the 365-brand ground pork or chicken, both of which have just the right amount of fat for great flavor and a juicy texture. The best bologna brand is also found at Whole Foods under the 365 label.