I’d say the other way around. The store brand version has nearly always been fine, in my experience. I’d instead use the store brand and make a list of cases where the store brand isn’t okay. At least in my experience, it’s pretty limited. What I can recall having bad experiences with, off-the-cuff:
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Soup. I have had some pretty disappointing store brand canned soups.
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Things with motors, like small kitchen appliances, blenders and the like. I’ve had a bunch of generic ones of those fail before.
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Sodas. These aren’t exactly the same. Some people particularly prefer the taste of one root beer or whatever, and it might be that they prefer a name brand. That being said, there are also people who prefer store brands, so…shrugs
There are also a few cases where I’ve run into a particular brand that doesn’t have a store clone, and where I really like the name-brand product.
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Pretzels. I particularly like Dot’s. I haven’t seen a store brand clone of Dot’s.
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Sardines. Bit of a niche, but I once went on some website with some guy that was absolutely rabid about sardines, reviewed them, wrote huge amounts about them. My dad always liked eating canned sardines on crackers. Tried a couple different brands, and yeah, there is a difference, but the big one is that stores in the US don’t normally have heavily-smoked sardines (well, okay, sprats) in oil. I started eating Latvian “Riga Gold” sprats in oil, and they’re just amazing. I don’t like a lot of foods I’ve tried from Eastern Europe, but man, they hit it out of the ballpark on that. I don’t think that we have a US-based comparable manufacturer.
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Red Windsor cheese. It’s not all that fancy, just cheddar with some port wine marbled in, but I really like the taste. Same thing on this – I don’t think that there are any companies in the US that make the stuff, so it’s name brand or nothing.
If someone did clone any of the last three, though, I’d give 'em a try.
I’ll piggyback on your comment with Worcestershire sauce.
Lea & Perrins make the original Worcestershire sauce, they also have never disclosed the full recipe, just the ingredients.
There are store brands and even Heinz makes a sauce. None of them are as good as the original.
That’s a good point. A number of sauces/mixed condiments in general are kind of like sodas. There are definitely competitors, but they all have slightly different variants, even within the same field. And people seem to have definite preferences on the specific variant.
Like, the Brits have that brown sauce stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sauce
HP Sauce is the earliest brown sauce, and is the most popular brown sauce in the United Kingdom, accounting for around 75% of sales. Daddies, OK Sauce and Wilkin & Sons are other popular brands. Another is Hammonds of Yorkshire,[8] popular in Northern England.[9]
Most supermarket chains in the UK[10] and Ireland also stock their own brand of brown sauce.
Yea the heinz one sucked. I had to Chuck it I just couldn’t get through it.
Heinz is particularly bad, they use soy sauce and corn syrup, and I don’t think ferment it at all.
Whereas Lea & Perrins use zero soy, and ferment the sauce.
The absolute worst part about it all is that Lea & Perrins was bought out by Heinz in 2005, and yet the Heinz branded sauce is still shit flavored water.
The original is still made the same way, and is still good.
The absolute worst part about it all is that Lea & Perrins was bought out by Heinz in 2005, and yet the Heinz branded sauce is still shit flavored water.
No, this is the best part because L&Ps product didn’t go to shit after getting bought out.
True. That is a good thing.
Store brand ketchup is always awful.
Mac and cheese is another with significant variety in flavor between brands.
Honestly, while not exactly the same, the Walmart Great Value Mac and Cheese is almost identical to Kraft Dinner. Slightly different noodles, and the cheese powder is fairly pale compared to the striking yellow name brand stuff, but once the milk and butter is mixed in the colour comes out and it looks and tastes pretty damn close.
Trader Joe’s smoked sardines in olive oil is delicious.
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Everything but eyedrops
Potato.
Why buy potato with name?
Potato already have name: Potato.
I once buy brand name potato.
I kid, I am poor and store no have potato.
What is store, comrade?
I told Latvian cousin to buy store brand potato. He laugh, I laugh. There is no store.
Is this like a Borat joke? Why Latvia? Latvia isn’t underdeveloped or something.
Why Latvia? Is Joke?
No comrade, is meme.
Latvian no like meme, cannot eat.
Thanks. Mainly I was wondering ‘why Latvia’?
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In the EU, any certified “organic” product
Worst comment on here. Not using poison to keep of pests and having to have some decency about how abuse methods are for the land you work on is usually a good thing. The eco labels in the EU mean something. We could argue about how they could be even better, but they’re certainly better than not having any. I don’t know about other places though. Something to avoid is made up labels or esoteric bs like Demeter.
In the US, organic-labeled products typically used way more pesticides than non-organic because organic growing is much more vulnerable to pests. They just need to be approved “organic” pesticides. It’s a meaningless label here.
To add on to this explanation, the food industry in the US is chock full of fake marketing terms that are designed to get more eco-conscious consumers to fall into their trap. This is a problem across large swathes of the food industry, but one of the most egregious is chicken.
- “No antibiotics” is supposed to mean the chicken was never given antibiotics (shocker, I know). There is no regular methodology for verifying this label is accurate outside of random sampling of poultry at slaughter.
- “No hormones” is a completely useless label you’ll see used all the time. Hormones are not allowed in the production of chickens for slaughter in the US.
- “Cage free” is another tricky one. Chickens are almost never kept in cages when raised for slaughter. Hens are frequently kept in cages for egg-laying purposes. If you see this on chicken breast packaging it probably doesn’t mean anything.
- “Free-range” means the chicken had some kind of access to “outside.” There are no standards for how much “outside” space is required or what that “outside” space has to look like.
So unfortunately a bit more legwork is required to make sure product labeling statements are actually worth something. That’s a problem in the US, but the opposite side of the coin is problematic too (like how many people now attribute “GMO” as meaning “toxic”).
Not being soaked in RoundUp is a win.
Thanks for the info. I reside in the EU and I honestly did not know that “organic” was fake in the US. I will edit my comment accordingly. Sorry for you guys over there …
My brother in law works as a biologist for a large processed food company and he has to measure and track all the different batches of food they process. According to him it’s the exact opposite, there are measurable amounts of pesticide in all of the non-organic foods they get in (apples, sweet potatoes, etc) and absolutely zero measurable amount of pesticides in the organic food they receive.
I used to think the same as you until hearing it from him that it’s an actual measurable difference and the exact opposite of what I thought.
Worst comment on here
Why do you say that? Please elaborate.
Not using poison to keep of pests and having to have some decency about how abuse methods are for the land you work on is usually a good thing.
Please translate that sentence into English, or German if that´s easier for you.
The eco labels in the EU mean something. We could argue about how they could be even better, but they’re certainly better than not having any.
I agree with that
Something to avoid is made up labels or esoteric bs like Demeter.
In fact Demeter is much more “organic” than stuff with just the EU Bio label, because their rules are way more strikt. I really don´t care if the farmers bury cow horns filled with manure in their fields during a full moon while praising Rudolf Steiner, if their products are simply of better quality than EU Bio label products and why would I? Everybody is free to live the way they choose …
Non organic and GMO foods. Oftentimes the only difference is the label. Even if truly “non GMO” that doesn’t count for the thousands of years worth of selective breeding that are basically GMOs with extra steps.
Not to mention for organic and GMO food they often use a shit ton of pesticides because they can’t use plants with built in insect resistance.
Another, perhaps controversial, item are non cage free/free range eggs and meat. Similar to the first point, most of these only differ in label and there is often no difference. Even if they are free range and certified by the government, the official definition for free range is a maximum of 5 chickens for a 1x1meter of space, hardly free range. Cage free is even worse, instead of many small cages it’s essentially one large cage with thousands of chickens and much greater chance for workers to step on and crush them while attempting to work.
Food should be cheap but a company’s soul objective is to increase revenue (high prices) and reduce cost (inhumane conditions). Even farmers markets are corrupted, many of the stands there sell goods from large producers to capitalize on peoples willingness to spend more for “local” and “humanely” produced goods.
That being said if they are genuinely a local farmer doing honest work then please support them. They need all the help they can get.
There’s a lot of them. I find it easier to classify by the store. For example, Costco’s and HEB’s (in Texas) store brand products are considered great (and sometimes even better) than their branded counterparts.
The store by me has their own brand of pop-tart that’s got more icing and filling as well as being half the cost. They don’t have as many flavors, but they’re not shrinkflated to the point of being a sad cookie. Shout out to Meijer toaster pastries.
Publix Monterey Jack cheese is, oddly, better than the other brands. Like it’s the first one I ever tasted that wasn’t just rubbery nonsense. Their milk and butter we like, and their coffee is good.
Whole Foods store brands are all pretty good stuff.
I buy any brand of canned beans (I don’t buy refried beans, I refry them) or dry beans, unbleached white flour, egg noodles, fizzy water (though I do prefer Topo Chico, it’s a weak preference), sugar, and a lot of what we buy is fresh fruit & vegetables, they mostly aren’t branded.
Publix has great cheese in general for decent pricing. But holy fuck did everything else get so much more expensive in the last 3 years. Over a decade ago, Publix prices were comparable to Winn Dixie and only slightly above Sedanos or Presidente. Nowadays Publix makes Whole Foods look like Aldi’s.
The fried chicken is still worth it though.
Yeah one of the odd effects of the food price inflation was a sort of flattening. The difference between whole foods and Publix just disappeared, I used to just get meat from whole foods (they probably thought I was a relentless carnivore) and food at other stores, but now it’s about the same price, so just get most of the food from whole foods. Publix brand dairy stuff is so good (and I remember when they were the only big grocery to push back against RBGH) but Whole Foods has a literal cheesemonger training program with state board exams, their fancy cheese area is ridiculously good.
For a couple of years, Kroger was selling some Ugandan whole bean coffee under its store label that was the best coffee I ever had.
It was perfect. And now it’s gone.
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Any drugs. If you’re not familiar with medications, just look at the active ingredients. They’re most likely the same or very similar dosages.
Also, sleep aids are usually just diphenhydramine, aka Benadryl.
I’m not a doctor or a pharmacist. But just because it has the same ingredients doesn’t mean it is the same. The way the medication is packaged, what fillers it has, etc. may have an impact on the way it works. Anecdotally I’ve heard of people having a different reaction to namebrand and generic because of some of these factors.
It’s even more exciting in GMO-produced drugs like insulin where there are no generics, just ‘biosimilars’ because they’re not made by the exact same strain of yeast/bacteria. Also then the excipients vary from brand to brand. For some reason some people have almost no effect from one insulin compared to another.
Good point, and worth keeping in mind! At the same time, the generics are often so much cheaper it’s worth a try. I take Claratin daily for allergies and the Costco version is literally 10% the cost of name brand. It’s astounding how much of a markup basic OTC drugs can have.
Yeah there are less controls around generic prescription drugs than their name brand counterparts.
The article goes into how oversight over generic drugs is really low.
This is common knowledge.
This is why a lot of insurances only cover the brand name ones if there is a problem with the generic.
Vitamins and health supplements too. My mom works at a pretty big brand name one of them and they literally package the exact same stuff for a generic brand that’s half the price.
Store brand frozen vegetables and canned vegetables are fine, however I’ve found that there’s a huge difference in quality where canned beans are concerned. Generic refried beans are just awful, as are generic baked beans.
Refried beans are one of those items that need to be a very specific brand (la costeña obviously). Other bean brands are ok but nothing ever comes close.
Green beans, also. Mostly, it’s the texture and how good a job was done removing all the stems.
I find many of my store brand (Publix) products are as good or better than the leading brands. Not all, but many.
But if you need a specific one, I’d say yellow mustard.
Publix is employee owned too, so I would rather buy their brand then others personally.
Agreed.
Worth noting that one of the daughters of the founder has a significant share of the stock too, and she’s kinda a right-wing chud
I would say pretty much anything. The only time I got a cheaper brand and absolutely hated it was when I saw a pack of Bar-S hot dogs for like $0.60. You know how the stereotype is that hotdogs are made from feet and assholes? Those Bar-S fuckers tasted like they actually were.
Sometimes the off brand is even better than the name brand. Oreos, for example, are way better than Hydrox.
Gotta disagree with the Oreo part.
Getting rid of trans fats definitely knocked Oreo down a peg in taste.
They’re still fine, and the huge amount of different kinds of definitely nice. But Hydrox beats the current regular Oreo imo.
I’ll go one step further and say some of the generic store brands are better. Sring cheese I find is often better when it’s store brand or a generic brand. Tends to be lower fat which makes it denser, more stringy, not just a stick of mozzarella.
Kroger zesty dill pickles blow all other brands out of the water. I don’t know how they do it
While my original comment was being funny with it, I truly do think that is the case with some brands. I love the Dollar General brand of Pop Tarts more than actual Pop Tarts (the pastry bit is softer and the insides taste more like preserves than artificial jelly) and many of Great Value (Walmart’s food brand) items are loads better than the name brands, like Doritos, Little Debbie’s, juices, etc.
Really as long as they are labeled correctly and not like dairy treat vs ice cream it’s probably fine
Yeah, for me just about any consumable I buy store brand for. They’re pretty much equal the name brand (if not sometimes better). There are some exceptions, but as long as they’re the same product, they’re probably produced in the same factory even.
labeled correctly and not like dairy treat vs ice cream
I mean, that is labeled correctly…
Something to do with milk fat percentages. And since it’s (relatively) expensive, once you go cheap enough they stop using it and legally can’t call it ice cream. There’s not enough cream to meet the legal definition
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Most things but I just wouldn’t buy processed food branded or unbranded.
