Processed Foods That Weirdly Made A Comeback In 2020

We think it's safe to say that 2020 was an ... interesting year, to say the least. From the Australian wildfires (remember those?) to the 2020 U.S. election, it's been a wild ride. But one story has dominated the news cycle since the very beginning of the year: the coronavirus pandemic. At first, the outbreak was centered in Wuhan, China. But in a matter of months, the virus circled the globe, forcing pretty much the entire world into their homes for a matter of months.

With this brand-new lifestyle came lifestyle changes that nobody could have predicted prior to the outbreak. We obsessively stress-baked banana bread. We hoarded toilet paper. And in the process, we largely changed how we ate. Not only did we stop going out to restaurants and start cooking more at home, but we also bought different products at the grocery store.

For years, packaged and processed foods have been waning in popularity as consumers choose apparently healthier and more natural meal options. But at the beginning of the pandemic, nobody knew how long we were going to be inside, so we all stocked up on some shelf-stable comfort food favorites. We forgot how much we loved some of these products, and while we may not keep them around forever, they helped us get through a period of self-isolation when there wasn't much else to do other than just eat.

So, let's take a look at the processed food we've been eating during the pandemic.

You probably remember it from years ago: the iconic red Campbell's soup can. You might have fed it to your kids when they came inside after playing in the snow all day, or your parents might have served you a bowl of the stuff when you were sick. But one thing is for sure: Consumers have been largely shunning canned soup for years now. According to The New York Times, Campbell's has seen declines in soup sales for the past two years.

But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, things seemed to turn around for the company ... temporarily, if nothing else. In just one month, Campbell's soup sales rose by a staggering 59 percent. In fact, the company had to increase its production and temporarily increase its employees' wages just to meet the enormous jump in demand.

Again, this is probably largely due to the fact that consumers started looking for cheaper products that could be cooked quickly and easily. After all, a few weeks of isolation in, and making a soup from scratch started to seem less than appealing — a can could get the job done just as well.

We all love to make a homemade pasta sauce to bless our favorite pasta shapes with. But, let's face it, making your own pasta sauce isn't exactly the fastest and most convenient thing you could cook. After all, you have to spend hours chopping, dicing, sauteing, and simmering if you want it to come out perfectly. During isolation, spending this much time on just a sauce wasn't always an option, especially when it came to busy weekdays.

In fact, pasta sauce became such a popular staple that some grocers noticed it leaving their shelves too quickly to restock in time. Pauly Guglielmo, a pasta sauce manufacturer, said that he was having trouble meeting the significantly increased demand. Grocery stores wanted to buy more product all at once so they would be less likely to sell out.

Prego reported that their pasta sauce sales increased 52 percent at the beginning of the pandemic, a huge leap forward for a product that may have lost its appeal in recent years as people eat out more and develop a preference for more "natural" products. The real challenge for shoppers was choosing the best grocery store spaghetti sauce to slather over their noodles. 

Remember the days when you were rushing to work and all you could manage to do was grab a coffee and a granola bar on your way out the door? Well, if you found yourself working from home in 2020, that was no longer a problem. While you may not have been able to spend hours prepping breakfast during the weekday if you were still working, spending a little extra time in the kitchen in the morning suddenly became viable.

Combine that phenomenon with the fact that so many consumers wanted to stock up on non-perishable foods, and it's easy to see how Aunt Jemima pancakes made a comeback. Late in the first quarter, the company saw its sales jump by eight percent.

The Aunt Jemima brand also faced the racial reckoning that swept the U.S. and the world during the summer of 2020. The company admitted that their long-time logo was racist and vowed to change it. It was a smart move, but some felt that it was too little, too late.

We all love a fluffy stack of pancakes in the morning ... just leave the prejudice behind.

Eating healthy is great, and it definitely makes you feel better when you keep up these habits on a regular basis. But let's just face it. Sometimes, when things seem really stressful, you just have to eat your feelings. In these cases, a salad just isn't going to cut it for us. That's why many of us have apparently been hoarding packages of Oreos during the pandemic.

The maker of the iconic brand told Wall Street analysts that the company had seen a rise in sales of around 30 percent. It wasn't just a one-time deal, either. It seemed like customers stocked up on cookies at the beginning of the pandemic and kept coming back for more. Per The New York Times, "the pandemic revealed that sheltering in our homes — where many of us will continue to work — turns our kitchens into one huge vending machine."

From stress-eating to just grabbing a quick bite in between Zoom calls, the pandemic forced many of us to start stocking our homes with more snacks. And as one of the most beloved snack foods of all time, it makes sense that Oreos would appear on this list.

We're going to go out on a limb here and say that even before the pandemic, canned meat may not have been as unpopular as it had been for several years in the past. With a growing interest in different Asian cuisines, products like Spam have been reappearing in restaurant dishes lately.

However, that doesn't mean that people were buying a lot of the stuff and using it at home. It just seems like a food for hard times, you know? Well, then came the coronavirus pandemic, and suddenly, everyone had a reason to stock up on the canned meat classics they had grown up eating.

The Wall Street Journal reports that canned meat sales from grocery stores climbed a shocking 60 percent in the first month of the pandemic. What did all those people make with their canned meat? We can only hope that some of them tried their own version of Spam musubi, a popular Hawaiian treat.

Let's rewind and take ourselves back in time to the late '90s and early 2000s. Times were changing, schedules were busy, and convenience foods were all the rage. Enter the Hot Pocket. This microwavable sorta-sandwich was the perfect after-school snack or lazy dinner on the way to soccer practice. Were they abjectly unhealthy? Yes, absolutely. We can't remember ever even eating a hot pocket that came with more than a whisper of a vegetable. But were they delicious? Also yes, absolutely.

You may not have had them in your freezer for a while, but once the pandemic started, people started buying these things in bulk, per CNN. At the beginning of the lockdown, people tended to buy a lot of items like Hot Pockets. However, as the weeks and months wore on, consumers again started turning to healthier food. At least Hot Pockets could relive their glory days for a brief moment.

At one point in time, it was hard to walk into any suburban household in the U.S. and not find a box of Hamburger Helper in the pantry. It's one of those things that we always used to have on hand. It's a dinner that comes together really quickly, and it's something that everyone's taste buds can appreciate.

But in recent years, it seems like this kind of prepared, boxed, and processed food has become less popular. After all, when you could take a quick trip to Chipotle or Sweet Green, why would you bother with the less-than-healthy alternative that is Hamburger Helper?

However, the pandemic made people change their minds about keeping this stuff around. After all, if you remember, there was a lot of worry about the food supply chain at the beginning of the pandemic. Therefore, some people wanted to have as much non-perishable food available as possible. Perhaps that's why boxes of Hamburger Helper were flying off the shelves in March.