Brand Name or Shop Brand foods?

I don't know why it is but brand name foods usually taste just that little bit better than the shop's own equivalent and so if I can, I always prefer to get the brand name products.

Kellogg's Cornflakes always taste better than the other brands, Coca Cola always tastes better than weak watery stuff shops brand.

Is there any basis to this superiority or is it just conditioning to accept that Brand Name foods taste better and in reality there is little to no difference?

Are there any shop brand foods that you think taste better than the Brand Name

I've never found any that are better than the name brands, but some seem fairly interchangeable. Not cola, that's for sure. Store brand Mac & Cheese is about the same as the regular Kraft blue box stuff.

Generic or house-brand cola pretty much always sucks. Really, really bad.

House brands are usually meant to be less expensive, so, one assumes, suffer somewhat from reduced quality.

Not necessarily, though, because they're not spending a ton of money on package design, marketing, and advertising. I think some of the product is pretty much identical.

It really depends. As mentioned, house brand cola is just about always bad. On the other hand, housebrand ginger is pretty much indistinguishable from Canada Dry. I'm generally open to trying the house brand, and then deciding.

Of course, I buy stuff from dollar stores, which to my wife means that I'm about one bad day away from being a hobo.

Store brand ketchup is fine by me, don't really notice the difference between it and Heinz.
Store brand lemonades are usually as good or nicer than similar branded products.
Store brand colas nearly all taste like shite.
Store brand pizzas can often be superior to famous frozen pizza brands, Chicagotown, Goodfella's etc.
Store brand beans are about the same as their famous branded cousins like Heinz, Batchelor's etc.
Store brand muesli and similar cereals often taste to me better than their famous brand cousins like Alpen.

I find I like store-brand peanut butter. Usually a little less sweet.

Walgreen's "Big W" condoms chafe. The Sam's Club "Slamming Sammy" condoms are pretty good though.

It seems like citrus sodas are okay as generics, but cola definitely isn't. I've never noticed much of a taste difference when it comes to generic breakfast cereals. In a lot of cases, the difference between the generic and name brand is purely packaging, so it's not something I normally worry about too much.

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Originally posted by Sarahfeena

Store brand Mac & Cheese is about the same as the regular Kraft blue box stuff.

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Wow, I never think store-brand mac'n'cheese is right. It always seems much grittier. Store-brand soda is pretty good, as long as it's not cola or root beer. I grew up on generic cereal and peanut butter - both of those are generally OK. Store brand cookies are usually decent, as long as you're not expecting the exact same thing as the name brand.

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Originally posted by Zuul

It seems like citrus sodas are okay as generics, but cola definitely isn't. I've never noticed much of a taste difference when it comes to generic breakfast cereals. In a lot of cases, the difference between the generic and name brand is purely packaging, so it's not something I normally worry about too much.

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Lemon and lime flavoured, but not orange flavoured for some reason. I think Club Orange is the nicest, or maybe Club Rock Shandy (Orange + Lemon), they're way nicer than Fanta et al.

Store brand Sprite is fine with me. It's a mixer half the time anyway! I did like HEB (Texas grocery store) brand diet cola, but I'm not that picky - I'll happily drink the walmart fake diet Coke.

I have noticed that Planters brand jars seem to do better at keeping peanuts crunchy.

My son's favorite cold cereal is Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I tried buying him generic kinds, but he could tell. I suspected he was just conditioned to want the brand and couldn't actually tell a difference, so I sneakily mixed in some of the generic kind in with the real kind and served it to him. He said, "mom, I think there's something wrong with this, some of these don't taste right." I conceded the point and started finding other things to save money on :P