Any drugs. If you’re not familiar with medications, just look at the active ingredients. They’re most likely the same or very similar dosages.
Also, sleep aids are usually just diphenhydramine, aka Benadryl.
I’m not a doctor or a pharmacist. But just because it has the same ingredients doesn’t mean it is the same. The way the medication is packaged, what fillers it has, etc. may have an impact on the way it works. Anecdotally I’ve heard of people having a different reaction to namebrand and generic because of some of these factors.
Good point, and worth keeping in mind! At the same time, the generics are often so much cheaper it’s worth a try. I take Claratin daily for allergies and the Costco version is literally 10% the cost of name brand. It’s astounding how much of a markup basic OTC drugs can have.
This is common knowledge.
This is why a lot of insurances only cover the brand name ones if there is a problem with the generic.
Vitamins and health supplements too. My mom works at a pretty big brand name one of them and they literally package the exact same stuff for a generic brand that’s half the price.
Recently I’ve been buying the grocery store brand cereals. They’re half the price and I honestly find them tastier and made with better ingredients. Kellogg’s quality has gone down the drain and it’s really noticeable when you switch over.
Personally I don’t care about brand names but about quality, as long as it’s not shit just buy the cheaper options. Mostly the brand stuff isn’t worth it, at least here in Czech republic but here’s whole different problem with us getting all the shittiest products from EU.
I’d say the other way around. The store brand version has nearly always been fine, in my experience. I’d instead use the store brand and make a list of cases where the store brand isn’t okay. At least in my experience, it’s pretty limited. What I can recall having bad experiences with, off-the-cuff:
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Soup. I have had some pretty disappointing store brand canned soups.
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Things with motors, like small kitchen appliances, blenders and the like. I’ve had a bunch of generic ones of those fail before.
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Sodas. These aren’t exactly the same. Some people particularly prefer the taste of one root beer or whatever, and it might be that they prefer a name brand. That being said, there are also people who prefer store brands, so…shrugs
There are also a few cases where I’ve run into a particular brand that doesn’t have a store clone, and where I really like the name-brand product.
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Pretzels. I particularly like Dot’s. I haven’t seen a store brand clone of Dot’s.
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Sardines. Bit of a niche, but I once went on some website with some guy that was absolutely rabid about sardines, reviewed them, wrote huge amounts about them. My dad always liked eating canned sardines on crackers. Tried a couple different brands, and yeah, there is a difference, but the big one is that stores in the US don’t normally have heavily-smoked sardines (well, okay, sprats) in oil. I started eating Latvian “Riga Gold” sprats in oil, and they’re just amazing. I don’t like a lot of foods I’ve tried from Eastern Europe, but man, they hit it out of the ballpark on that. I don’t think that we have a US-based comparable manufacturer.
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Red Windsor cheese. It’s not all that fancy, just cheddar with some port wine marbled in, but I really like the taste. Same thing on this – I don’t think that there are any companies in the US that make the stuff, so it’s name brand or nothing.
If someone did clone any of the last three, though, I’d give 'em a try.
I’ll piggyback on your comment with Worcestershire sauce.
Lea & Perrins make the original Worcestershire sauce, they also have never disclosed the full recipe, just the ingredients.
There are store brands and even Heinz makes a sauce. None of them are as good as the original.
That’s a good point. A number of sauces/mixed condiments in general are kind of like sodas. There are definitely competitors, but they all have slightly different variants, even within the same field. And people seem to have definite preferences on the specific variant.
Like, the Brits have that brown sauce stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sauce
HP Sauce is the earliest brown sauce, and is the most popular brown sauce in the United Kingdom, accounting for around 75% of sales. Daddies, OK Sauce and Wilkin & Sons are other popular brands. Another is Hammonds of Yorkshire,[8] popular in Northern England.[9]
Most supermarket chains in the UK[10] and Ireland also stock their own brand of brown sauce.
Yea the heinz one sucked. I had to Chuck it I just couldn’t get through it.
Heinz is particularly bad, they use soy sauce and corn syrup, and I don’t think ferment it at all.
Whereas Lea & Perrins use zero soy, and ferment the sauce.
The absolute worst part about it all is that Lea & Perrins was bought out by Heinz in 2005, and yet the Heinz branded sauce is still shit flavored water.
The original is still made the same way, and is still good.
The absolute worst part about it all is that Lea & Perrins was bought out by Heinz in 2005, and yet the Heinz branded sauce is still shit flavored water.
No, this is the best part because L&Ps product didn’t go to shit after getting bought out.
True. That is a good thing.
Store brand ketchup is always awful.
Mac and cheese is another with significant variety in flavor between brands.
Honestly, while not exactly the same, the Walmart Great Value Mac and Cheese is almost identical to Kraft Dinner. Slightly different noodles, and the cheese powder is fairly pale compared to the striking yellow name brand stuff, but once the milk and butter is mixed in the colour comes out and it looks and tastes pretty damn close.
Trader Joe’s smoked sardines in olive oil is delicious.
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In Canada, No Name Brand. All the products are in non eye-catching packaging, and are quite cheap. They are quite popular with the college and university housing crowds.
Most things but I just wouldn’t buy processed food branded or unbranded.
I find many of my store brand (Publix) products are as good or better than the leading brands. Not all, but many.
But if you need a specific one, I’d say yellow mustard.
Publix is employee owned too, so I would rather buy their brand then others personally.
Worth noting that one of the daughters of the founder has a significant share of the stock too, and she’s kinda a right-wing chud
Holy shit, I didn’t know that. Thanks!
Agreed.
Store brand frozen vegetables and canned vegetables are fine, however I’ve found that there’s a huge difference in quality where canned beans are concerned. Generic refried beans are just awful, as are generic baked beans.
Refried beans are one of those items that need to be a very specific brand (la costeña obviously). Other bean brands are ok but nothing ever comes close.
Green beans, also. Mostly, it’s the texture and how good a job was done removing all the stems.
Noodles. Premade sauce in jars, that’s a different story, but the noodles themselves … I simply can’t taste any difference, so why should I pay five times as much for the same amount of noodles?
Same with rice. I usually buy a huge bag of no-name rice from a nearby overseas market every couple of months, which is a lot cheaper than buying the same amount of rice in small bags, and doubly so if said rice is a brand name grain.
I disagree, there is a huge difference for pasta. People tend to buy Barilla here which is both expensive and bad. There are other brands which are much better and sometimes even cheaper (e.g. Rummo).
But then again I find store bought sauces pretty uninspiring so it probably doesn’t matter which pasta you use for those. It really matters for making pasta dishes which rely using the starchy pasta water for creating a sauce (like carbonara).
Breakfast cereal 100%
I’d go out of my way to buy Malt-o-Meal cereals even if they weren’t cheaper. Marshmallow Mateys 4 Lyfe!
I don’t recommend the generic for mini wheats though. I tried it, and as someone who always seeks the store brand for stuff I was not impressed.
I actually like the generic mini wheats better. I much prefer the generic cinnamon toasts too. The name brands taste weird to me now, like they have too much iron in them or something. Tastes metallic to me.
With the mini wheats, there are also a few different styles, mostly in how finely shredded the fibers (or whatever) are, how they’re compressed, what the size is, and the thickness of the frosting. Like, the Post is barely the same cereal as the Kellogg’s, and the store brands play around with the ratios too. It’s really a matter of preference.
I like store brand oat loops more than Cheerios. I feel like they are less powdery.
Frozen vegetables. They all grew out of the same earth, possibly even at the same farm. The only difference is the packaging.
Except frozen peas
Good quality frozen peas are heavenly, most store brand bags taste like nothing and are somehow dry even if cooked in water
The packaging can make a big difference though so make sure to use extra care with some no name stuff. The food inside will get freezer burned way quicker with a lot of the shittier no name packaging.
It’s fine to buy , but tastes differ A LOT. try it with same veggie frozen and fresh, you can taste the difference right away
The comment is comparing generic to brand-name frozen vegetables, not frozen to fresh vegetables
Birthday/Christmas cards
Nobody in this generation buys those. I’d guess nobody younger than boomers has a significant percentage buying them regularly.
I’m a zoomer and I both buy and love receiving those.
I would say pretty much anything. The only time I got a cheaper brand and absolutely hated it was when I saw a pack of Bar-S hot dogs for like $0.60. You know how the stereotype is that hotdogs are made from feet and assholes? Those Bar-S fuckers tasted like they actually were.
Sometimes the off brand is even better than the name brand. Oreos, for example, are way better than Hydrox.
I’ll go one step further and say some of the generic store brands are better. Sring cheese I find is often better when it’s store brand or a generic brand. Tends to be lower fat which makes it denser, more stringy, not just a stick of mozzarella.
Kroger zesty dill pickles blow all other brands out of the water. I don’t know how they do it
While my original comment was being funny with it, I truly do think that is the case with some brands. I love the Dollar General brand of Pop Tarts more than actual Pop Tarts (the pastry bit is softer and the insides taste more like preserves than artificial jelly) and many of Great Value (Walmart’s food brand) items are loads better than the name brands, like Doritos, Little Debbie’s, juices, etc.
Gotta disagree with the Oreo part.
Getting rid of trans fats definitely knocked Oreo down a peg in taste.
They’re still fine, and the huge amount of different kinds of definitely nice. But Hydrox beats the current regular Oreo imo.
Publix Monterey Jack cheese is, oddly, better than the other brands. Like it’s the first one I ever tasted that wasn’t just rubbery nonsense. Their milk and butter we like, and their coffee is good.
Whole Foods store brands are all pretty good stuff.
I buy any brand of canned beans (I don’t buy refried beans, I refry them) or dry beans, unbleached white flour, egg noodles, fizzy water (though I do prefer Topo Chico, it’s a weak preference), sugar, and a lot of what we buy is fresh fruit & vegetables, they mostly aren’t branded.
For a couple of years, Kroger was selling some Ugandan whole bean coffee under its store label that was the best coffee I ever had.
It was perfect. And now it’s gone.
Publix has great cheese in general for decent pricing. But holy fuck did everything else get so much more expensive in the last 3 years. Over a decade ago, Publix prices were comparable to Winn Dixie and only slightly above Sedanos or Presidente. Nowadays Publix makes Whole Foods look like Aldi’s.
The fried chicken is still worth it though.
Yeah one of the odd effects of the food price inflation was a sort of flattening. The difference between whole foods and Publix just disappeared, I used to just get meat from whole foods (they probably thought I was a relentless carnivore) and food at other stores, but now it’s about the same price, so just get most of the food from whole foods. Publix brand dairy stuff is so good (and I remember when they were the only big grocery to push back against RBGH) but Whole Foods has a literal cheesemonger training program with state board exams, their fancy cheese area is ridiculously good.
Honestly, i’ve always approached this question the reverse of how it’s posed here. Pretty much every store brand whatever is just fine.
But, picking a few fancier versions of things as exceptions is nice sometimes.Lately for me, Kingdom aged organic cheddar and Kerrygold butter have been my indulgences. I don’t eat much dairy, so they last me a long time. They’re loaded with flavor. And, it’s just nice to have a few things that feel special.
