Aldi Full of Goodness Mediterranean Quinoa with wheatberries, tomatoes and black olives

Whilst Aldi generally isn't the most exciting place for new treats or interesting food finds, I use it a lot for a lot of healthy staples and quite often they do surprise you, such as the day I found this microwaveable quinoa pouch next t the mircrowaveable rice - considering the likes of Uncle Ben's charge almost twice the price for something that is mostly rice with about 2% quinoa in, it was good to find something that lived up more to the quinoa name - although it is 20% quinoa vs 58% wheatberries...

Along with the wheatberries and quinoa, it also contains tomatoes, olive oil, olives, rehydrated tomatoes, ground pepper and sugar (why of why do they have to add sugar to this?). At 179 calories per half pack it's fairly healthy with 5g of protein and not too sugary (1.5g) and not as salty as some microwaveable pouches (0.69g per half pack)

 Opening the bag after microwaving, it looked fairly decent if not a little beige and uninspiring, it had quite strong wholegrain smell with hints of olive.

It made a pretty quick and easy lunch with falafel and salad (and my beloved ChicP turmeric hummus) but in all honestly was a little bland. I like olives but the olive taste in this is really strong and quite sickly after a while (maybe because it's an ambient pouch product rather than fresh products). The texture is a little soft and 'gruelly' and whilst it was fine as a side, you couldn't make this into a main dish. The tomatoes also didn't really come through - partly as the olive taste is so prominent.

It's not an awful product by any means and pretty healthy for what it is as well as being quick and easy and it might be useful for a work lunch but overall it was a little dull and something I wouldn't rush back to Aldi for,

Bought at: Aldi
Nutrition per half pack 125g: 179 calories, 5.1g fat, 0.9g sat fat, 1.5g sugars, 0.69g salt