By itself, the smell and taste of mayonnaise is kind of disgusting, but when placed in between two slices of bread with cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes or mixed with potatoes, spices, hard-boiled eggs, and mustard, it tastes pretty good. This Jekyll and Hyde condiment also has a reputation for being a bitch when it comes to healthiness, turning normal healthy sandwiches into tasty pockets for saturated fat. It’s hard to believe something so innocently, virgin off-white, could be a sinfully, slutty evil.
Mayonnaise makers have tried their best to create slightly more wholesome versions of this spreadable cream, but their attempts have pretty much ended up with bland tasting paste that would be better off being used for a mayonnaise bikini than for a sandwich or salad. Enter the Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Nutritionists have told us for years that olive oil is one healthy mofo, providing healthier fats that contain one too many prefixes, like polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. The folks at Best Foods have shoehorned Bertolli’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil into their mayonnaise to go along with the usual soybean oil, eggs, and vinegar. Those ingredients will emulsify into a mayonnaise that has three times less saturated fat and almost half the calories of regular Best Foods Mayonnaise. However, it also has one-third more sodium than the original, but overall it’s healthier thanks to the multi-prefixed fats mentioned earlier.
Messing with a sandwich staple seems sacrilegious, because if you change one thing, it seems to change everything else. The Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil smells like regular mayonnaise, but I have to say its flavor kind of threw off my taste buds after I spooned some in my mouth. The olive oil doesn’t overpower it, but there’s just enough to know that there is some in it and there was also a very slight bitter aftertaste to it. After getting the taste of mayonnaise out of my mouth, I realized that most sane people wouldn’t eat mayonnaise with a spoon and I needed to try it in a real world situation, so I slathered a generous glob of it in a turkey sandwich.
With olive oil mayonnaise oozing from under the bread, I consumed the sandwich and determined that it had sort of a muted mayonnaise taste with a hint of olive oil. If you’re trying to eat healthier, it’s indubitably a much better option than any light mayonnaise, but it definitely wasn’t as good as the regular version, making the Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil a lot less of a sinfully, slutty evil.
(Nutrition Facts – 1 tbsp – 50 calories, 5 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 2.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, less than 1 gram of carbs, 0 grams of protein, 1 mayonnaise bikini.)
(Editor’s Note: Thanks to TIB reader Alexander for recommending this product and making me his lab rat.)
Item: Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Price: $6.19
Size: 30 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: A lot less of a sinfully, slutty evil. Much better tasting than light mayonnaise. Lower in fat than regular mayonnaise. Contains polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Creamy. Like most mayonnaise, it makes a good mayonnaise bikini.
Cons: Muted mayonnaise taste. Hint of olive oil may turn people off. Higher in sodium than regular mayonnaise. Slight bitter aftertaste to it. I paid six dollars for a jar of it. Eating mayonnaise with a spoon straight from the bottle.