The Unhealthiest Microwave Popcorn Brands You Can Buy

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When you're looking for a healthy snack, popcorn is often touted as a great option. It can be low-calorie and high in fiber, plus super tasty. However, not all popcorn is the same — far from it. While, on one end of the spectrum, you have plain, air-popped popcorn that comes with a variety of health benefits, on the other end, you have popcorn that is laden with sodium, fat, and questionable additives that turn your once-healthy snack into a bit of a nutrition let-down. Sure, that extra-extra-buttery and super cheesy popcorn might be tasty every once in a while, but you might not want to make it your nightly go-to when you're craving something salty.

So which popcorn brands have some of the worst offenders among their product lines? We've picked out a few to avoid, based on the advice of three experts: Joeleen Stocker, nutrition services manager for Mount Nittany Health; Isabel Smith, MS, RD, CDN, founder of Isabel Smith Nutrition and host of The Wellfuel Podcast; and Madison Reeder, RD, vice president of clinical operations at ModifyHealth. You can see our full methodology below.

The Act II brand offers quite a lot of different varieties of popcorn and a handful are going to be less than ideal if you're trying to watch certain areas of your diet. Before we get into them, though, what exactly is ideal when you're looking at microwave popcorn? For starters, Isabel Smith said, "For sodium, I generally like to see under 300 milligrams per serving, and ideally around 2–3 grams of saturated fat or less. Some of the extra-butter varieties can be much higher than that."

Act II's Hot & Spicy microwave popcorn does indeed contain 590 milligrams of sodium per serving, along with 6 grams of saturated fat (26% and 30% of your daily recommended consumption, respectively). This saturated fat can be traced back to the popcorn's inclusion of palm oil and Madison Reeder told us that "many popular brands use palm oil, which is about half saturated fat, the type that raises LDL cholesterol."

Then, there's Act II's Xtreme Butter, which you can probably guess also contains more than the desired amount of saturated fat, just by the name. While it's a bit better than the Hot & Spicy, you still get 4 grams of saturated fat, or 20% of your daily allotment. Even the basic Butter Lovers popcorn from Act II doesn't drop things down that much; you have 3 grams of saturated fat, but also 310 milligrams of sodium. It's no wonder that Act II was our least favorite microwave popcorn brand.

Surely that smiling, bespectacled Orville Redenbacher wouldn't cause any harm to your health! Not so fast, though — because that's exactly what this brand may be doing, and it's almost a little sneaky about it. As Joeleen Stocker said, "even products marketed as 'simple,' 'light,' or 'natural' can still contain surprisingly high amounts [of sodium and saturated fat]."

That's the fact with Orville Redenbacher's Simply Salted popcorn, which, per serving, packs in 350 milligrams of sodium, alongside 5 grams of saturated fat. Additionally, the brand's seemingly benign Butter popcorn is also an offender — because, after all, you think, if it was truly that much butter and that bad for you, wouldn't they include something like "extreme" or "extra" in the name? But that's not the case. The plain butter popcorn comes in with 6 grams of saturated fat and 310 milligrams of sodium per serving. That makes it just about neck and neck with the brand's Movie Theater Butter popcorn, which contains 340 milligrams of sodium and 5 grams of saturated fat — identical to Orville Redenbacher's Ultimate Butter product.

As Isabel Smith pointed out, popcorn on its own is naturally very healthy. The health concerns come into play when we start adding a bunch of extra stuff to that popcorn — and that's something we can observe with the Jolly Time brand, which dates back to the 1930s.

The Jolly Time brand has plenty of popcorn options and many aim to amp up the flavor, even if it means also amping up the fat and sodium. There's Blast O Butter, with 310 milligrams of sodium and 3.5 grams of saturated fat per serving. There's The Big Cheez, with 360 milligrams of sodium per serving and 4 grams of saturated fat — plus artificial flavors. The Jalapeño Butter popcorn? You get 5 grams of saturated fat and 420 milligrams of sodium. The brand's Kettle Corn, meanwhile, comes with 5 grams of saturated fat, even if the sodium dips down to 230 milligrams (still 10% of your daily recommended intake).

What is Pop Secret's secret? Maybe it's the fact that a handful of its popcorn products contain unhealthy levels of saturated fat.

The brand's Kettle Corn microwave popcorn contains 4.5 grams of saturated fat per serving. The Double Butter popcorn contains 4 grams of saturated fat and a nearly too-high 270 milligrams of sodium. The Homestyle Butter and Extra Butter popcorns also have 4 grams of saturated fat per serving. 

Many of these different varieties of Pop Secret having the same amount of saturated fat is real-life proof of an observation that Madison Reeder made, saying, "I always try to remember that regular versus light matters more than the flavor name. Movie-theater butter and homestyle from the same brand can have identical saturated fat, while the light version brings it close to zero."

It's Pop Secret's Sweet 'N Crunchy Caramel popcorn and Sweet 'N Crunchy Kettle Corn that both steal the show, though, with each containing 6 grams of saturated fat per serving, for 30% of your daily recommended intake. However, with all this talk about saturated fat, you may be asking if it's even really a big deal if it's so prevalent in so many popcorn brands. While it is true that some saturated fats are better for you than others, like that in dairy and meat products, it's generally agreed upon that those from processed foods (like microwave popcorn) are likely to increase your risk of obesity, heart problems, and more. 

BoomChickaPop is probably known more so for its bagged, ready-to-eat popcorn than its microwave products, but the brand does have three microwave varieties — and all of them are less than ideal by our experts' standards.

The three varieties include a Lightly Sweet Kettle Corn, Sea Salt, and Real Butter. Again, like Orville Redenbacher's, BoomChickaPop is kind of pushing its offerings as healthful. The kettle corn is just "lightly" sweet. The butter popcorn is made with "real" butter. The sea salt popcorn contains "only three ingredients." However, while the focus on fewer ingredients is a good thing (Isabel Smith noted "I like to see a relatively simple ingredient list. Popcorn, oil, salt, and some seasoning is really all you need!" and Madison Reeder also concurred that a short ingredient list is a good sign), a look at each box's nutrition panel will reveal the bad.

In each serving, the Lightly Sweet Kettle Corn contains 5 grams of saturated fat (or 25% of your daily recommended intake), plus 240 milligrams of sodium. The Sea Salt variety likewise has 5 grams of saturated fat, plus 250 milligrams of sodium. The Real Butter is the worst offender, with 5 grams of saturated fat and 320 milligrams of sodium (14% of your daily recommend intake).

Long-standing brand Cousin Willie's lineup of popcorn products is small, but as for what the brand does offer? Well, let's just say the nutrition facts might make you think twice before you eat a full serving. (In fact, you might want to just eat a smaller serving of all of these popcorns, if you choose them. As Madison Reeder suggested, "A full bag of movie-theater butter popcorn can carry more than half a day's saturated fat and a third of a day's sodium, so splitting a bag with someone is an easy fix."

Cousin Willie's Movie Theater popcorn comes with 320 milligrams of sodium and 4 grams of saturated fat per serving. The Buttery Explosion popcorn comes with 4.5 grams of saturated fat and 330 milligrams of sodium. The White Cheddar popcorn comes with 4 grams of saturated fat plus 490 milligrams of sodium.

Despite the potential health woes, though, Cousin Willie's is the only microwave butter popcorn that is movie theater worthy. The buttery explosion popcorn came out on top in The Takeout's ranking of 12 microwave butter popcorns. 

In order to choose our unhealthiest popcorn brands that you can buy, we spoke with Joeleen Stocker, nutrition services manager for Mount Nittany Health; Madison Reeder, RD, vice president of clinical operations at ModifyHealth; and Isabel Smith, MS RD CDN, founder of Isabel Smith Nutrition and host of The Wellfuel Podcast, to determine the primary red flags shoppers need to watch out for, including sodium, saturated fat, and types of oils used. We then sought out specific popcorn products that exhibited one or more of these red flags, identifying brands with multiple products that fit these parameters. Note that just because a brand is on this list, it does not mean the brand does not have any healthy options whatsoever.