What food types do you never buy off-brand? For me it's anything that involves milk in it's making, so milk, cheese and yoghurt generally.
I have no problem buying off-brand milk, cheese, etc. I tend to think it's coming from the same place anyway and can't tell a difference in taste or quality. As for me, it's usually items where I CAN tell a difference. Like.... Cheez-its and Helman's mayo. The offbrands have a distinctly different taste.
Agreed. General food items are hard to differentiate but when you start getting into specific brands there's always something a little off. Kraft is like that. Especially with the boxed mac & cheese. There are so many off brands of mac & cheese but they're all missing whatever wizard magic Kraft uses.
A big one for me is toilet paper. It's a pretty personal tool and you feel pretty high class regardless of your financial situation when you got yourself a soft pillow for your bathroom duties instead of a sheet of generic flimsy paper for toilet tissue.
I would have to agree with the dairy products, except when it comes to butter, whole milk, and sour cream. I definitely won't buy off brand meat products such as bacon and hotdogs. Off brand meat seems to just taste off. I'm also not very fond of off brand macaroni products. Anything in a can is okay in my book.
There is a lot of trial and error involved in determining what foods are good in the cheaper brands. A lot of it is a matter of taste. My room mate can't stand any canned spaghetti products other than Chef Boyardee. But, to me, they all taste about the same. I get store brand/off brand flour, sugar, salt, cooking oils and pasta. Off brand canned veggies usually have sticks and stems in them, at least in my experience so I steer clear of those. I prefer specific brands of spices, seasoning packets, breads and condiments like mayo and ketchup.
I don't buy off brand milk, cheese, yogurt, meats (any type of meat), chips or soda. For the most part I am comfortable with non brand name for almost everything else. Up until recently I only bought major name brands, then I had an experiment to try and save some money and started buying store brand as often as possible. If you look at the ingredients labels the order and amount of everything is pretty much the same as major brands. I have started to save about $20 on every trip to the grocery store. It may not sound like a lot but I go once a week so it's almost $1k per year.
Beans, most dairy products and a few other select items that cannot have the taste replicated with offbrand items, such as sweets. Things like oil and bread etc I will buy off brand as I can never tell the difference. There are actually 1 or 2 items that I will only buy off brand because I prefer them, although admittedly this is rare.
That's another good one as well, it's not that much more expensive and it's something where you can definitely feel the difference. I try to stock up a bit on the higher quality and more expensive toilet paper when they are on sale, which is really quite often, even if when on sale it is still more expensive than the cheaper kind, it's a much smaller difference.
I actually prefer some of the off brand products to be honest, but there are others I specifically avoid because they are awful. Dollar General brand Soy Sauce is hideous. I don't think it can even qualify as real soy sauce, it tastes just like a bunch of strange chemicals, and is almost as black as tar. It also has a really awful unappetizing smell to it. However, some of the Save-A-Lot brands, I really like. Their "Baumann's Best Sweet & Tangy" BBQ sauce is fantastic. Not to mention it's made with real sugar, no corn syrup. It's not too sweet, and has a really nicely balanced flavor to it. I've already mentioned several other times on here that I'm a huge fan of their "Diane's Garden" brand of crushed tomatoes - though they are really hard to find these days for some reason. Their Tio Santi brand of spicy tomato sauce is also really good, and a fine substitute for El Pato brand sauce if you can't find it.
