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I don't find this a surprise at all: Like mainebrokerman said, many store brands are the same as the national brands. This has been known for ages, I thought. Now, for Consumers Report, I gave up on them ages ago. There studies are not that detailed and I just don't put much trust in what they say. It might just be me....
Some generics are better, and some are just plain bad.
Our local grocery store HEB has a super-cheap generic brand called Econo Max. Everything I've tried from that brand has been so bad we couldn't eat it. Sometimes not even my dog will eat it, which is saying a lot considering the things she does eat. It's like they just made it look like food, they didn't make it out of anything edible.
When I was a kid we visited the Kellogg and Post factories in Michigan....I was amazed to see the boxes with different labels on the conveyor belt all getting filled with the same corn flakes etc from the same hopper.....first the brand name and then all the store and generic brands.
Now I know sometimes there is a difference.....I noticed the store brand of canned green beans....has more stem ends with stems still attached--I don't know if that is still the case but it was when I tried the store brand of green beans (years ago).
That turned me off to generic or store brand canned vegetables.
Yeah, this isn't exactly news. One of the reasons I was a loyal Kroger shopper when I lived in Ohio was the quality of its house brands (well, except maybe for the old Cost Cutter brand ... ).
There are many generic and store brands which I find are much better and more full than the much more expensive name brands. I will always try the generic and store brands and make my own decision whether or not I want to buy it again. I don't think I can lump all generic and store brands together and say I won't buy generic or a store brand just because I found one can of something I didn't like. I like to save money too well and those generic and store brands do save me lots of money.
Many times when you buy a name brand, the company which makes it owns several other name brands. One of these is the Grupo Bimbo, a Mexico based company which bought the Sara Lee North American Bakery business a couple of years ago. That company also owns Entenmann, Boboli, Thomas, Arnold, Brownberry and Oraweat and of course Bimbo. Sara Lee also bakes for generic and store brands, and in fact not long ago at our Walmart, I saw the man delivering Sara Lee, also had Walmart brand bread on his rack.
If you want some of the finest private label brands, Loblaw's (Canada) President's Choice brand has some of the highest quality products that I have seen. They are NOT readily in the US at this time although they have been carried by Jewel and Schnuck's over the years.
There are many generic and store brands which I find are much better and more full than the much more expensive name brands. I will always try the generic and store brands and make my own decision whether or not I want to buy it again. I don't think I can lump all generic and store brands together and say I won't buy generic or a store brand just because I found one can of something I didn't like. I like to save money too well and those generic and store brands do save me lots of money.
Many times when you buy a name brand, the company which makes it owns several other name brands. One of these is the Grupo Bimbo, a Mexico based company which bought the Sara Lee North American Bakery business a couple of years ago. That company also owns Entenmann, Boboli, Thomas, Arnold, Brownberry and Oraweat and of course Bimbo. Sara Lee also bakes for generic and store brands, and in fact not long ago at our Walmart, I saw the man delivering Sara Lee, also had Walmart brand bread on his rack.
We have found the brand of soup $ General carries is just as good as Campbell's when it comes to the cream style and hubby likes Aldi's bean and bacon better than Campbell's.
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