Golden Valley Natural Organic Beef Jerky, Original, 3-Ounce Pouches (Pack of 8)

I had previously been pretty loyal to Jack Links beef jerky-- it always had a nice flavor and was never crumbly (I can't STAND dry, crumbly jerky!). But I noticed every time I would eat it I would get terrible headaches. So I looked at the ingredients-- I had NO idea it had MSG in it-- and I had been feeding it to my CHILDREN!That night I was on the net looking for a healthier alternative. This is what I found.It is truly fantastic. Delicious and flavorful, it is soft enough for my 3 year old to chew up and NO MSG or NITRATES!! There was only a little bit of fat in it.I had looked all over the net for buffalo jerky to be delivered and it was pretty expensive. This is a bargain-- I signed up for continued shipments (every 2 months--though I might have to make it EVERY month) and it worked out to be $[...].I was worried that the Original flavor would be boring but it is quite tasty--lots of flavor (the ingredients say it has soy sauce in it). It is not strong like a terriyaki flavor but it gives it a nice taste.

This product has a nice flavor, and no MSG or nitrates based on the label. As another reviewer pointed out, it's a bit on the sweet side but I enjoyed that. But, and yes I know jerky is dried meat obviously, I found this product to be very dry, a bit too dry and tough. The thicker pieces were in fact hard for me to bite through and chew. I'll still enjoy this jerky, but it could be a lot more tender, and I've had tender jerky made with no MSG or nitrates in the past from other companies.If you like very tough jerky, I suppose raise this to a four or five star review for you.

I know beef jerky is expensive, I know it's hard to find organic/natural beef jerky, but I just don't know if I can continuously spend $40+ on so little!!The taste of this beef jerky is far superior to that of standard grocery store brands and does seem to be competitively priced with other natural products. But, when you open the package and you see like 3-4 medium sized pieces and 3-5 smaller ones (I found it hard to quantify 3oz in my mind before I ordered) and realized you paid $5+ for that bag alone, you can help but be a bit shocked. Hey, some people spend like $3-4 daily for their fancy coffee, so maybe it's not so bad when you look at it that way (if you're someone who does spend that kind of dough on coffee).Of course I couldn't control myself and I ate two bags in two days, believe me it's not hard to do!! I'm not sure if it's just cheaper to get grass-fed beef and a dehydrator and make my own jerky or not, I might look into this, as I really like beef jerky and I can't see this lasting more than 1-2 weeks at most (and that's with one person eating it).I can't tell that the smoke flavoring has been added, but I'm far from a jerky connoisseur!

I have been ordering this on auto ship for well over two years now. Initially, I thought it was a great product. Comparable to Trader Joe's Organic Beef Jerkey. Good flavor, tender. I used to give it as a gift. It was that good. Things started to get a bit dicey about four orders ago. Although they were all the same lot number, some bags would taste more sweet, like a teryaki flavor, than peppery. More recently, the last three orders have been a mixed bag: not much pepper flavor, some tender pieces, some hard and somewhat dry. The last few bags I've opened we haven't finished the bag. Hard, dry, not flavorful. At all. I took a bag with us today on a road trip and it tasted like it needed salt. Jerkey! Needing salt. go figure. My little boy didn't even finish one small piece. He through on the floor. He's two and has been eating this stuff all along because it was so soft and easy for him to chew. I checked the sell by date today, thinking that perhaps I was sent something outdated. Nope. It's (supposed to be) good until 2015.Additionally, they changed the packaging over a year ago and it is very challenging to open. I have to use my teeth. Irritating. The old package was without this issue.I do not recommend! Unfortunately, I still have about 13 bags left.

Sadly, this is no longer the super-premium jerky that it used to be. Granted, if you're used to grocery-store jerky, then this is still a much better product. But if you've acclimated to chemical-free jerky, then the "smoke flavoring" that they've recently started adding tastes like, well, smoke flavoring, and not the real thing.You may not notice a difference. Apparently jerky is one of those things where you notice a down-shift in flavor, even when you wouldn't notice an up-shift in flavor. (Like margarine eaters think butter tastes fine, and powdered milk drinkers think cartoned milk tastes fine, but when people do the opposite, they find the tastes terrible. Jerky is the same--if you upgrade from convenience store jerky to premium you might not notice it, but when you downgrade from "the real thing" to anything else, it tastes distinctly artificial.)I used to buy this in bulk every few months (with a discount per Amazon Subscribe & Save), but the change in flavor made me double-check the ingredients list, and I found that the new "smoke flavoring" was added when they changed packaging. So this jerky is good, but not worth the premium any more. If anyone has a suggestion for an all-natural replacement without ingredients like "smoke flavoring" I'd appreciate it, since I'm now searching for something new.