If generic brand is just as good as wonder bread, I'll never buy generic brand bread again.

i heart generic brands

It really depends on what you buy. Canned vegetables doesn't really seem to be a difference, as well as milk. I've also had good experience with mac and cheese.

There used to be a Winn-Dixie here, and their generic brand is Thrifty Maid, which is just horrid.

i'd have to be blind, deaf, dumb, and dead before i ate wonder bread.

I typically but generic products, and not limited to the grocery store either. Some brands I just won't budge on, like Coke and Cheerios. The budget brands just don't cut it there. I especially but generic clothing as I refuse to advertise for companies for free, let alone to pay more to advertise for them free.

@muckpond: I remember on a news show a long time ago they fed some lab rats cardboard and some Wonder Bread and there was no nutritional difference between the two. That's when I stopped eating white bread altogether.

We save so much money because we buy generic brand of something. A lot of times, you either don't notice the difference or you actually *gasp* LIKE the generic taste better!! We buy generic jam, generic butter, generic jelly and generic bread a lot of times. Yeah we get through a jar of jelly maybe once every few months, but even a jar of smuckers is like $3.75 and generic is $2.75 so for every jelly jar we buy generic, we save a dollar. If the price difference was less than 50 cents it isn't as worth it.

@Cowboys_fan: I've had pretty good luck buying the generic Rice Krispies from a couple of different chains (Farm Fresh, WalMart) and found them to be comparable.

My mother used to say that you never want to save money on health care, healthy food, and shoes. Seems weird to say shoes, but she said that everything else you can spend a little less on and you won't be as negatively impacted, but a pair of ill-fitting shoes won't make their cheap price seem any sweeter to you.

I've had a lot of experience with cheap shoes (Payless) and expensive shoes, and it really depends on the individual person but overall, I will never stray too far from Nine West, Bandolino, BCBG or any other moderately priced name brand to devote myself exclusively to Target or Payless shoes. I have my fair share of $14.99 heels from Target, but they don't offer the kind of support that a good pair of Nine West heels offer.

I have a pair of shoes I bought at Target for $16 and a pair of Nine West shoes I bought for $55. I wore the Target ones for maybe 3 months before I gave up on them entirely. The Nine West ones are still comfortable and durable, 4 years later. A lot of times it really does pay to spend more.

"Is it really all just packaging?"

Where else would it come from, Ben? Someone is making the stuff and with maybe a few exceptions, its not the grocery store. Some generics are a slightly different formula, but still being pumped out of the same factory as the name-brand stuff. The extra you pay for name brand buys you 1) brand, 2) more flavoring/grain/whatever they cut back on to produce the generic.

Don't know if it is still true, but I remember years ago, that radio shack sold "optimus" branded stereo equipment. The stuff was Pioneer, but a different label put on the front. Same assembly line, different label, 30%-50% less..

Nothing touches JIF Peanut Butter though. Generic can be just as good, but I say it is product-dependent.

Aldi's sums this article up well.

I find that many products purchased there are actually better in taste than the brand name I used to purchase. Savings are amazing too.

I buy Sam's Diet Cola and find the taste better than Diet Coke. In some cases generic brands are as good as or better than name brands, but in other cases the generic brand is awful.

We have flowers bread plant in town. It produces quite a few brands and some varieties (Sunbeam Bread and Ideal bread) are allegedly identical.

It's true - Significant Other worked in a bacon packaging plant as daily labour, and they simply split the line - the schneiders was no different from the no frills.

If I remember correctly, Kroger brand peanut butter is produced by Peter Pan. At the exact same time as the Peter Pan salmonella recall, Kroger did the same thing. Coincidence?

@MissJ: My mom used to say never skimp on shoes, mattresses or cars. I'll have her add health care and healthy food to her idiom.

In college, I worked at a fruit processing plant called Red Wing Foods. It was a nice night job, and I liked it more for the chemistry than anything else. We processed food for Welch's and Hunt's. We also made jams, jellies, and condiments for Tops and Wegmans, local NY grocery chains. The only different between the two brands was the label, unless there was something special about the jar. From the point on, I always bought generic. You're usually paying extra for a label.

Buy a good brand: paper towels, soup, cereal, ice cream
All the same: canned food, hi-tech consumer groceries (like bug spray and cleaning products), frozen veggies, bread, juice, cheese and dairy

It's like Bryant, Payne, and Carrier air conditioners. In many cases their parts roll off the same assembly lines. You just don't pay for the advertising with a Payne unit.

I knew a woman who worked at a vegetable cannery, and she said straight up that the only difference between Del Monte stuff, and the local supermarket brand stuff was that when they were done canning and labeling the Del Monte stuff, they had to stop the line for a couple of minutes to switch to the supermarket brand labels, and then they would start right back up.

@mst3kzz:

Wait until someone breaks the story that Jif is going into Kroger or Safeway packaging.

I generally give cheap brands of almost everything a try at least once. I like to know where I can continue to go cheap, and where I should actually spend for quality, and the only way to be sure is to try everything until you settle on something you're going to keep buying.

With bread, this is pretty much the ONLY way to do things, because sometimes the expensive brands suck.

Things I won't buy Generic:
Ketchup. Heinz only.
Soda: Diet Coke/Coke. Flavored (orange/Grape not too picky on.
Cereal: Cheerios, Capn Crunch/Crunchberries

Things I will buy Generic:
Bread
Milk
Mayo
Corn Flakes/Rice Krispies
Sugar

There are more things we're not picky on and usually by the cheapest.

@Greeper:
Sometimes the store brand soups are pretty good, and sometimes I prefer them to name brands. This is especially true for condensed.

BTW, I spoke to a Campbell's salesman who informed me that a lot of store brand soups are made by Heinz, after Campbell's sort-of drove them from the market.

    I just LOVE the soft, chewy, sugary goodness of white bread. However, I've heard that the stuff isn't good for you. I've always subscribed to the idea that bad bread is better for you than no bread, but...

    I found out about Nature's Own white wheat. That stuff is the best "healthy" bread out there, bar none. As for generic bread right now, you get either perfectly fine-tasting white, or hockey-puck brown. At least where I live...

And don't tell me how it's not really any good for you. I don't need to know!

I've noticed that OTC generic medicines have a label that disclaims this practice. My PM painkiller from Walgreen's says "This product is not manufactured or distributed by McNeil Consumer Products Co., owner of the registered trademark Tylenol PM Caplets."

There's probably a liability reason for this sort of thing. Of course, Walgreen's is probably using a Tylenol formula without a patent on it, just having it manufactured elsewhere.

True of the cosmetics industry as well. Department store line and drugstore line with same 'ingredients'. Lancome=Loreal.

This is a common practice. I worked for nine years for one of the largest snack food manufacturers in the world. While this company did not make any "private label" product, our smaller competitors did. In fact, it was a significant portion of their business to produce store brands, I assume from the same product lines, as shutting down lines is very costly. This was the rule, not the exception for everything from milk to bread.

Anecedotely, a neighbor of mine once told me a story of working for a company that only provided labeling of products. They would recieve a truck load of mayonaise and put several different labels on the product, everything from name brands to the name of cruise ship lines. All the same product.

I've found that certain store brands can even be better quality. Not even sure how that works though.

I used to do data entry for Summit Bank (before it became Fleet, then BofA), and my job was to process the contents of lockboxes. This is how I learned that ShopRite's applesauce was actually the same as that made by Mott's. I no longer remember if this held up for the other Mott's products, but I think I was a bit obsessed with applesauce at the time, so that's probably why this bit of info stuck in my head.

As far as private label, Stop & Shop's house brands "Simply Enjoy" and "Nature's Promise" stack up very well across most product lines with the brand names.

Woe betide those of you outside New England who do not know the joys of Stop & Shop.

One product that to has a very noticeable difference to me between generic and brand name is graham crackers. Something about those magical elves I guess, but I tried generic in college and it just didn't take.

Well I tried store-brand vs Del Monte brand canned veggies back-to-back just a few weeks ago, and they definitely taste different; I prefer the Del Monte for corn and peas.

Virtually all generic & store brand cereals are made by Malt-O-Meal or Ralcorp [the former Ralston Company]

I've also tried the Head-and-Shoulders knock-off store brand for a few weeks and my hair got gradually greasier so I switched back. Just haven't had much luck with generic.

@dj_skilz: Completely true. Aldi's stuff can be great. Their frozen pizza and jarred spaghetti sauce are great, and so are their chicken patties.

However, and trust me on this one, do NOT get the Aldi Pizza Rolls clone. NASTY.

There aren't many things where I'm picky about the brand. Facial tissue (I have allergies and go through a lot) and toilet paper are two.

The biggest savings by far on generic is baby formula. A large can of generic formula is $12-$15. A can of Enfamil or Similac is $20-$25. That's a LOT of difference on something that is strictly regulated by the FDA! My daughter's pediatrician tipped me off on that one.

@ekthesy: I have found Simply Enjoy and Nature's Promise brands in my area at various grocery stores, and we don't have "Stop & Shop" here. I suppose those brands are carried by the same company that ownes Stop & Shop as well as my area grocery stores? We have Giant, Bloom, Food Lion in the D.C./Northern VA area.

It's just cheaper to get things produced in a big factory in bulk for most things in the world. For some categories of products you'll pay more for the customer service or quality testing. This is pretty much true for anything. not just food.

Electronics, Clothing, Food etc etc. Everything is outsourced nowadays

Bread is the one thing you should not buy either generic or prepackaged. Bread is meant to eat fresh, without preservatives.

The US is the only place in the world where people would buy a week old bread in the supermarket at "generic price". Even if it costs 4$ a loaf, try a whole-grain loaf from your local artisan bakery (and I don't mean Panera), and you'll see it tastes so good it can replace a more expensive meal, and have less chemicals.

Everyone is saying store brand milk is just as good, but that's one thing I strongly disagree on. Every since I tried Horizon organic milk, I shell out the extra 2 bucks each time. Why? Because their 1% tastes like whole, and its shelf life is close to 2 months. You're lucky if the store brand lasts 3 weeks, not to mention that it's most likely loaded with bovine growth hormone.

I thought it was common knowledge that off-brand and store-brand items were often made in the same exact plants as their name-brand counterparts. I wouldn't doubt if the money you save really is reflected simply in the cost of the packaging, etc. I know I saw this on a news program recently...

@public enemy #1: I drink a LOT of milk, but after several years of buying store-brand milk exclusively, I recently stopped. Lately a lot of the store brand milk I've bought has just tasted "weird." Not nasty, or sour, just "off." And it wasn't just from one store--I bought from Target, Wal-Mart, and two different regional chains, and had frequent problems with each. I was reminded of the scene in Napoleon Dynamite where he identifies the defective milk ("The defect in this one is bleach..."), and wondered what was getting into my generic milk. I finally stopped buying store-brand milk--now I usually buy Roberts Dairy, which is ubiquitous here in Iowa--and have had nary a "weird" gallon since. (I also suspect that the store brand milk went bad faster, but that might just have been my imagination or coincidence.)

I also avoid store brand cheese, because it doesn't taste particularly good.

Most generic breakfast cereals are very good, and I recall hearing many years ago that many generic cereals come off the same line as their brand name counterparts. Some of my "old standbys" like Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs don't taste quite the same, so occasionally I'll splurge and get the "real stuff," but usually not.

I'm very picky about orange juice and won't tolerate generic or even off-brand, unless I'm *ahem* mixing it with something. Minute Maid, by the way, is far superior to Tropicana.

I can't stand generic Mac & Cheese. Store brand chips are usually pretty disappointing.

These things are all exceptions to the rule, the rule being that generic is usually just as good. I always buy generic medicine (both over the counter and prescriptions), of course. Oh, and my favorite kind of packaged bagel is the generic ones they sell at HyVee, a regional chain. I love those things, and will buy them even if the brand-name bagels are on sale for less.

Ugh, white bread.
I'm really big on cutting high fructose corn syrup out of my life and white bread is chock full of it. From the crazy expensive stuff to the generic brand in my grocery store, I forced my boyfriend to root through it all with me for 10 minutes trying to find one loaf without. I've sworn it off.

I wish someone had a website or blog that listed all the generic brands that are made by the name brand comapnies!

Generic cocaine tastes a lot different than the name-brand stuff.

Ahh, the plight of the cash-strapped college student. My roommate and I used to buy trash bags from the dollar store. They smelled like vanilla (it couldn't have been very good for you, like the new car smell) but it was $1 a box of 50 or so bags. Since we only emptied the trash a few times a week, if there was nothing in one trash bin but the other one was overflowing, all you do is put the contents of one bin into another bag and re-use that bag. As long as there wasn't any leftover food, just paper, it was fine to use again and they were just as durable as the hefty or glad trash bags.

It's been mentioned a couple times, but why do generic Cheerios taste so horrible? I use generic for a large portion of my food stuff, and rarely notice a difference, but the two times I had generic Cheerios I seriously thought I might throw up. They are absolutely totally awful.

It makes me wonder what General Mills does to Cheerios to make them not taste bad, LOL.

I will usually use a generic version of almost anything, but if I'm making Rotel dip, I have to use real Velveeta. The generic stuff doesn't melt the same, it turns oily and separates. Since the difference in price of the Rotel vs. store brand is about 10 cents, I go with the Rotel.

@MissJ:

Yup. Both Giant and Stop & Shop are owned by the Dutch global grocery conglomerate Royal Ahold, so it's not surprising you'd find NP and SE goods at the Giant as well.

And re: the dollar store, I've moved a few times in the last decade, and every move has occasioned a trip to the local dollar store for cleaning supplies (clean the apartment, throw away very dirty mops and brooms, regain security depo$$$it!) and trash bags, the poor man's moving boxes.

I looove the store brand stuff at HEB, here in TX. When I lived in MI, the Meijer brand stuff was pretty good, too.

I second the question about generic Cheerios. The taste and texture for the generics is just wrong. I tried the Aldi kind a few years ago, and the thought still makes me gag a little.