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no brand loyalty here, I get it on sale. And I don't buy pre made food except breads, Powerade and ice cream, butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheeses, deli meat on occasion, brown and serve sausage and condiments.
So we did the food snobbery...now name some brands that you have tried that you will not buy again.
For me:
Generic Chocolate Chips
Random thoughts...
It cracks me up that people are all exercised about the inclusion of Miracle Whip in this list, when Miracle Whip is a trademarked Brand Name for their "salad dressing" that cannot be used by any other company (and my personal mirth is amplified by the fact that the "Miracle" in the name Miracle Whip relates to this processed soybean oil product originally being sold for half the price of actual mayonnaise because of its cheap ingredients.)
On the other hand, Generic Chocolate Chips is not a brand at all.
Shearer's Homestyle Potato chips are made with partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Other brands are made with other kinds of oil, such as peanut oil, safflower oil, corn oil, whale blubber... (hard to find, I know)... and there is no other single factor which has more affect on potato chip taste. There's no reason to be in mystery about a food, even if you already threw out the wrapper... you can look up the nutrition label for most products online, including their ingredient list.
Chef Hector Boiardi, born in Italy, was famous in Cleveland in the 1930s for his beloved restaurants and "gotta have it" prepared spaghetti sauce. Creating a Brand Name out of a phonetic rendering of his last name, to popularize his gourmet reputation, his prepared sauces and canned pasta dishes were vanguards of the era of convenience foods that offered "Heat 'n Eat" ease, as well as simplicity of taste. This is a prime reason why they are still popular foods with many kids, for whom more aggressive and complex tastes are often a turn-off.
Bear Creek Soups are loved by some, not by others. It's always interesting to me to see this kind of pronounced division in tastes. That's all. Just a curious thing to me.
On the other hand, Generic Chocolate Chips is not a brand at all.
True but it is more than one brand from individual "stores". This might be more accurate for you. I don't like Publix choc chips, Food Lion choc chips or the DG choc chips.
Five Brothers Alfredo Sauce. I haven't eaten it in years because it tastes like someone drove through it and spun their tires, and put it back in the bottle.
I agree with the people who mentioned Sabra's hummus. I'd rather get Athenos or the fresh made hummus from the Middle Eastern bakery.
Banquet frozen entrees. There's a reason that they're so cheap.
Here's another vote for Sabra's hummus tasting weird. But it's really not hard to make your own, so I usually do. I think a lot of prepared foods are too sweet, which for some reason I find more annoying than the fact that they also have a lot of salt in them. Yoplait, as others have already mentioned; practically any American-made packaged cookie; many peanut butters (why add SUGAR?), many boxed cereals.
Someone else mentioned a frozen Asian dish they didn't like. I have yet to try any brand of something claiming to taste "just like a Chinese restaurant" that DOES. The rice comes out tasting like Minute Rice. The chicken or fish is in such tiny pieces it's unrecognizable. And the sauces are all ... what else? ... too sweet. For some reason, Italian-style dinners translate better to frozen packages, Bertolli's for example.
While I like many things I buy at Trader Joe's (high marks for frozen vegetables that when cooked taste as good as fresh), I have continually been disappointed with their baked goods. I've never had a loaf of bread, a muffin, a scone, or a dessert that was any better than what I could get at my local supermarket. Usually far worse. Weird textures and flavors. The only thing like that I like are those windmill-shaped almond/cinnamon cookies they sell. Those are delicious to me. They are not in the baked goods area, but on the shelf above the frozen food bins near where the candies are.
If the price is right, I might buy a food item at Walmart if it's a packaged national brand like yogurt or crackers or some frozen foods, but I would never buy meat or produce there. One thing I notice about the national packaged brands, they always have sell-buy dates much sooner than the typical sell-by dates in other supermarkets. I think they're getting a discount by taking the older stuff. So I'm always careful of sell-by dates there. Like coffee, for instance. A good price, but usually expiring in a week. Not that I think that makes it dangerous, but still at the Safeway you'd have a much later date.
Chef Boyardee. When I was a kid I used to see commercials for Chef Boyardee and they always looked so good on tv so I wanted to try it. Well I finally bought myself a can of their ravioli when I first moved out on my own, and it was without question the most disgusting thing I had ever eaten in my life. If there's one product that encapsulates everything wrong with the American food industry, a can of Chef Boyardee would be it.
-O
It's been decades, literally, but in my memory, both Chef Boyardee and Franco-American (i.e. Spaghetti-Os) taste, well, exactly like acid reflux.
There are 2 regional brands that i absolutely will not buy. Hood Dairy products and Cutrufello's cheese. There are others, but i'm too tired to list them right now.
Quote:
Other companies actually do make their own version of the same product (usually billed as "whipped salad dressing"). Walmart's Great Value store brand is just one. Could be that that poster buys the house brand version of the product rather than the Miracle Whip brand. I personally think the product itself is repellent, no matter what label it's getting sold under, but to each, his or her own.
I make almost everything from scratch, so I don't know about any frozen or boxed brands of anything, but there is one brand of wine I refuse to buy, not that I drink much at all, and that's Kendall-Jackson. It has nothing to do with the taste of any of their varietals, but the fact that they cut down a huge area of old growth oaks in California without going through the proper California EIR procedures, which undoubtedly would have disallowed much of the cutting without requiring wildlife habitat mitigation measures.
I also don't buy any brand of chocolate unless it's fair trade. I don't like to benefit cocoa producers who use child labor so I can have cheap chocolate.
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