The Worst Cream Cheese We Tasted Spreads Like Caulk And Is Bitterly Sour

It's hard to imagine a bagel without its best friend, cream cheese. In the case of our ranking of 11 store-bought cream cheeses, however, there's one we could happily live without. While there are definitely some perfectly creamy and chewy versions available, one failed our taste test so dismally that it landed all the way at the bottom of the list. It did have an element that's purportedly good for gut health, but that didn't exactly improve the taste — in fact, it did the exact opposite.

This unfortunate product happens to be Nancy's Probiotic Cream Cheese. Our taste tester wrote, "Of course, cream cheese is supposed to have a pleasantly sour tang, courtesy of lactic acid. However, the taste of the probiotics, which is known to be sour, overpowers every other flavor. Was this cream cheese milky or salty? I'll never know. Was it bitterly sour? Yes. Yes, it was." That's certainly not good. Compounding this issue was the fact this cream cheese had a caulk-like consistency, making it difficult to spread on test crackers (its ingredient list didn't include stabilizers, which could have been the issue). We simply can't recommend this one at all, even with the benefit of probiotics.

There were quite a few cream cheeses that ended up on the bottom of the list which all shared one thing in common: They all had a chalky or otherwise unappealing texture to them. A few of the poorly ranked cream cheeses didn't have stabilizers in them (like Nancy's Probiotic Cream Cheese), but even the low-scoring cream cheeses which did contain a stabilizer still had an overall unappealing texture. That would include Bettergoods cream cheese (Walmart's house brand, which does have some good products) and Simple Truth (Kroger's house brand), both of which disappointed on spreadability and mouthfeel.

For context, stabilizers maintain the homogenous texture in food products that have a soft or liquid consistency. Many of them help keep liquids that contain both oil and water combined so they don't separate over time. Part of why we love a good cream cheese is specifically because it's silky, rich, and thick; exactly what the disappointing ones don't deliver. So, even though Nancy's Probiotic Cream Cheese might sound good as a multitasking gut health dairy product, it's definitely not something we recommend you buy. In fact, we think your refrigerator would be better without it.