Own brand versus name brand: the blind test results thread

[LatentSpace82]

The grocery bill keeps climbing so let us do the consumer science the adverts hope we never attempt. The challenge, blind test an own brand product against the name brand you usually buy, family members make excellent unsuspecting lab subjects, and report the results here with the price difference

The house predictions based on years of these threads, the staples are usually a draw, tinned goods, flour, butter, paracetamol where the active ingredient is literally identical by law, while the name brands genuinely earn their premium in a few famous categories that the thread will identify by argument

Report format for good science, the product, both prices, the test conditions, the verdict, and crucially whether the household has actually SWITCHED since, because plenty of blind test losers keep getting bought anyway and that gap between the tongue and the trolley is the most interesting data of all

The yearly total is the motivator, households running this experiment across their regular shop consistently report meaningful money staying in their pockets, so treat the thread as a group audit and let the receipts accumulate

[NightHarbour]

First result in, own brand chopped tomatoes against the famous ones, blind tested on a household of four in a pasta sauce, nobody could tell, price gap is nearly half, switched permanently months ago and the savings bought the parmesan upgrade instead. Net flavour PROFIT

[Kieron83]

The paracetamol point cannot be repeated enough, same active ingredient, same dose, regulated identically, the premium buys a nicer box for a headache that cannot read

[IdleWarden]

Reporting a name brand win to keep the science honest, washing up liquid, the cheap one needed twice as much per sink so the price per wash quietly evened out, some premiums are concentration in disguise

[Pete14]

The concentration trap is real across cleaning products generally, price per bottle lies, price per use tells the truth, always do the second sum

[Hollow85]

Tongue and trolley gap confession as requested, our blind test crowned the own brand tea decisively and we still buy the name brand because my wife says the box matters to the shelf, the audit identified the cost of interior design and we pay it knowingly

[Kane_Node]

Paying it knowingly is the whole point of the exercise honestly, the audit is not about banning pleasures, it is about noticing which ones are actually pleasures

[MJF]

Kids as lab subjects report, own brand cereal decanted into the branded box survived undetected for three months, the deception ran perfectly until a sibling defected for pocket money. The product was never the issue, the mascot was

[Tundra54]

The famous categories where the premium is real in our testing, crisps, proper coffee, and inexplicably ketchup, we ran ketchup twice because the result annoyed me, the name brand won blind both times

[Sharp Shannon]

Ketchup is the acknowledged final boss of this genre, entire forum threads have died on that hill across the decades, some recipes are simply moats

[Zoe90]

Household audit total after six months of switching the draws and keeping the true winners, meaningful money monthly, roughly a takeaway, and the only regret was not running the experiment a decade earlier

[Wandering Matt]

The thread verdict matches every previous run, staples draw, actives are identical, concentration lies, ketchup stands alone, and the box tax is real but at least now it is a choice