Walmart's Great Value Vs Ocean Spray: Who Makes The Better Cranberry Sauce

Welcome to Dupe Detective, a column where I'll be reviewing a name brand food product's competitor product to find out how well it compares to, or even beats, the original.

Some Thanksgiving dishes can take quite a bit of effort to prepare, like the flavorful sourdough stuffing Marilyn Monroe loved to cook at home. However, no matter how much effort goes into a Thanksgiving dinner, cranberry sauce is reliably simple. While there at least dozens of condiments that taste better homemade than store-bought, cranberry sauce is not among them — famously, it's most satisfying from a can.

Leading the market in virtually all cranberry products is Ocean Spray, the farmer's cooperative that sort of ranks among 14 brands Pepsi actually owns. Walmart is among a number of stores with its own proprietary take on the Thanksgiving staple, producing jellied and whole-cranberry versions of cranberry sauce, just like Ocean Spray. I picked up both kinds of cranberry sauce from each brand at my local Walmart Neighborhood Market in the suburbs of Las Vegas to try myself. Ahead are my thoughts on each product, before my pick for which brand makes the better cranberry sauce overall.

The first item I tried was Walmart's Great Value Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce. Its standout quality was its texture, juxtaposing soft jelly with a satisfying crunch whenever I bit into one of its whole berries. The flavor at its forefront was tart, with sugar only really emerging in its aftertaste. I felt like it would be a pretty solid cranberry sauce for, say, making a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, given its lack of excess sugar and its pleasant consistency.

Unsurprisingly, I found my Great Value Jellied Cranberry Sauce sugarier than its Whole Berry counterpart. With that said, it was tastefully sweet, letting plenty of natural cranberry flavor through. Its consistency, meanwhile, split the difference between soft and firm. My only real complaint was that its shape was immediately broken when I removed it from the can, but my can opener was having trouble doing its job cleanly, so that may have just been my fault. There are at least numerous ways to use leftover cranberry sauce, and Walmart's Great Value Jellied Cranberry Sauce would work in any of them, thanks to a solid taste, nice consistency, and lack of major flaws.

The texture of my Ocean Spray Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce fell short of its Walmart dupe. I still got a decent contrast between soft jelly and crunchy berry, but its whole berries were just a little too firm, sticking around for longer than they should have the more I chewed them. That was a minor factor, for what it's worth, that only stood out because I had just eaten a product that did a better job in that department. Its flavor, meanwhile, was quite a bit more tart than its Great Value counterpart, to the extent it left an almost mouth-puckering sour aftertaste.

Ocean Spray's Jellied Cranberry Sauce had a texture that outshined its Walmart dupe, thanks to a high level of firmness that never compromised its ultimately soft consistency. At first I thought its flavor was sort of mild, but eventually a robust blend of tart berry and sugary fruit revealed itself. Trying them back-to-back, I got the sense Walmart's Jellied Cranberry Sauce used corn syrup or some sort of corn syrup-adjacent sweetener, whereas the Ocean Spray product incorporated a more natural, fruit-derived sugar. Even if that wasn't literally the case, that was what differentiated the two products' sweet components to my palate.

All four cranberry sauces I tried would be welcome at my Thanksgiving table. Walmart dupes have at times performed admirably against their name-brand inspiration, with Walmart's Great Value Luncheon Meat beating Spam, for example. This time, however, even though Walmart's cranberry sauces were good, they just weren't quite as good as the Ocean Spray products they were emulating.

The one leg up Walmart's Great Value Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce had on Ocean Spray was that the texture of its berries was superior. However, a deeper flavor made Ocean Spray's equivalent product a little more compelling in the end, worth putting up with its berries' just slightly excessive chewiness. Meanwhile, Ocean Spray's Jellied Cranberry Sauce was texturally superior to its Walmart dupe thanks to some extra firmness. It tasted better too, courtesy of a more tart and seemingly more natural berry flavor. 

If both options are available and a slightly higher price tag isn't a deal-breaker, opt for classic Ocean Spray's canned cranberry sauce over Walmart's dupes for the tastiest possible Thanksgiving.

At my local Walmart Neighborhood Market, located in the suburbs of Las Vegas, both kinds of Great Value canned cranberry sauce go for $1.72. Both Ocean Spray cranberry sauces cost $2.47.

Nutritionally, one serving — ¼ of a cup, or ⅙ of a can for all four products — of Great Value Whole Berry totals 110 calories, 10 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbs, less than 1 gram of fiber, and 24 grams of sugar. A serving of Ocean Spray Whole Berry is a practically identical 110 calories, 10 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, and 21 grams of sugar.

Meanwhile, a serving of Great Value Jellied Cranberry Sauce totals 110 calories, 10 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbs, less than 1 gram of fiber, and 24 grams of sugar. The sole factor differentiating it from its Whole Berry counterpart is that it contains 2 more grams of added sugar. Finally, one serving of Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce equals 120 calories, 10 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, and 22 grams of sugar.

Since canned cranberry sauce requires no prep beyond simply opening a can, I tried all of them as soon as I got home, separating each of them onto an individual plate.

To start, I tasted Walmart's Great Value Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce while noting down my initial thoughts. Then I did the same with Ocean Spray Whole Berry. After that, I moved onto both Jellied Cranberry Sauces, trying them in that same order. Once I completed that initial round, I had a few extra bites of each product, in no particular order, to see how my first impressions held up. My assessments are based entirely on this experience, and not any past thoughts I may have had on the featured brands or products.