We have had a few debates about this over the years and every now and then, I wonder if Rachel is substituting some of our foods in a crafty, money saving manner. So which is best, the upmarket brand or own label?
Rachel got rumbled many years ago in the days when we used to drink instant coffee (can’t stand it these days). We used to prefer Nescafé Gold Blend and seeing as it was considered rather expensive, Rachel started mixing in some cheaper coffee, thinking I wouldn’t notice. Except I did.
Some other times we have experimented with cheaper brands, you know, the supermarket budget range. The logic is to try and use a cheaper brand where the ingredients are basically the same. Examples could be flour, or perhaps toilet rolls, or peanut butter, baked beans or coffee and the list goes on. So if the basic ingredients are the same, surely it is more cost effective to buy the supermarket’s budget range?
Some it is, sometimes it isn’t
We have found a problem with cheap bread making flour i.e. strong flour. Sure it is 100% flour but it just isn’t the same. If we make a loaf of bread with cheap own label bread flour, it is a bit flat and slightly stodgy. Branded flour, such as Carrs or Allinson, makes a much nicer loaf of bread. We do, however, sometimes have a mix of cheap and expensive flour and this seems to work okay.
Take the two jars of peanut butter. Sunpat verses Sainsbury’s. The Sainsbury’s version tasted incredibly sweet first of all, not what a peanut butter should be like. What the heck are Sainsbury’s playing at, why do you need to sweeten something like that? Aren’t we fat enough as a nation already without even more sugar? The Sunpat version is proper peanut butter and yet this is not as nice as some of the other brands where you get 100% peanuts and nothing else.
So where do we go with all of this? On one hand we need to live in an economical way and on the other hand, why put up with second rate crap?
Maybe we need to get the balance right, a kind of middle ground. Sometimes the cheap own label stuff will do (cleaning stuff, decaf tea, rice, shampoo), other times it will be far more cost effective to step up a little (coffee, jam, fruit, porridge).
So I still don’t know for sure if Rachel has stopped trying to dupe me with cheaper brands. I can’t help but think I’m really setting myself up here and whether she will one day say “I’ve been putting the cheapest coffee in with the expensive stuff for the last twenty years and you’ve never noticed”.
So does this happen to other people out there? Cheap supermarket brands or pay a little more for something nicer? Maybe you dupe your other half with cheaper brands?