My neighbor insisted I should always buy the store brand pasta sauce

I thought it was just being cheap, but after a blind taste test with my family last week, the $1.89 jar from the grocery store won over the $5.99 name brand. Has anyone else had a generic product totally surprise them?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim3731mo ago

Was it the tomato sauce in the blue and white jar? That stuff is a total game changer. I had the exact same thing happen with ibuprofen, the little store brand pills work just as fast for my headaches as the fancy name brand ones. It makes you wonder what we're really paying for with all that fancy packaging and advertising. I'm a total convert to checking the generic aisle first now.

kelly.nora1mo ago

Hold up, I gotta disagree. For some stuff the brand really matters. That generic ibuprofen might work, but I swear the coating on Advil is way smoother and easier to swallow. And with food, a lot of store brands use cheaper ingredients or more salt to make up for flavor. You're not just paying for the name, sometimes you're paying for better quality control or a recipe that actually tastes right.

piperwhite1mo ago

Mentioning @kelly.nora, but you're actually wrong about the coating thing. Ibuprofen is ibuprofen, the FDA doesn't even let them change the coating that much because it affects how fast it dissolves. The generics at Target and Walmart are literally made in the same facilities as Advil most of the time, just with different packaging. And with food, yeah some store brands use more salt but that's not always a bad thing. I've had name brand soups that were salt bombs too. It's more about reading the label than picking one over the other.