The easiest way to slash your food bill!

We investigate how much you could save by dropping from a premium food brand to a supermarket own brand, with our very own blind taste test!

I have to confess, I’m a little partial to tomato ketchup – in fact, you could say I am an addict. I’m sure if you were to speak to any of my friends or family, they would soon tell you that I have it on almost everything!

Yet despite being a money-saving tips queen, I have to say there are some things I’m just not prepared to pay less money for. And one of them is my beloved ketchup – it just has to be Heinz.

That said, when it comes to other products, such as cereal, if I can save some cash by dropping a brand, I will. Because really, I don’t think there’s that much difference in taste.

But maybe I'm wrong?

That's why, in this article, I decided to investigate just how much money you can save on your supermarket shop by dropping a brand – as well as discover whether there really is much difference in taste between the big brands and the supermarket own brands.

The big shop

Let’s take a look at how much a basket of selected goods will cost in four of the major supermarkets – Sainsbury’s, Tesco, ASDA, and Ocado (Waitrose online).

The table below highlights how much the basket of goods will cost if it includes only big brand names:

Big brands

Source: mySupermarket.co.uk

Now, let's take a look at the costs of the exact same items from supermarket's own brands:

Supermarket own brands

Source: mySupermarket.co.uk 

So this shows that by simply dropping a brand, for this particular basket of goods, you could save £5.10 in Sainsbury’s, £5.51 in Tesco, £4.42 in ASDA, and £5.24 in Ocado. Although this may not sound like a lot of money, don’t forget that every little helps – and if this were a weekly shop, this would give you a saving of around £260 a year!

Of course, there are lots more items I could have included in the chart above, so your savings could be even greater!

The big taste test

Ok, so we’ve established that dropping a brand can save you money. But if you decide to do this, will you notice a difference in taste?

We decided to carry out our own experiment here at lovemoney.com HQ.

Five testers decided to be brave and take part in the experiment, and were asked to taste both branded and non-branded versions of baked beans, toast, Fruit & Fibre, and tea.

Admittedly, it's not the most scientific of tests, involving only five taste testers, but it is easy to conduct and certainly one that you can do at home.

To keep things simple, the non-branded versions all came from Tesco. Unfortunately I couldn’t get hold of the Tesco Premium tea bags which were referred to in the chart above.

So in this case, I used the Tesco Fair Trade tea bags which were slightly more expensive at £1.83 for 80 bags.

Each taster was asked to rate both versions of each product out of 10 and say which they preferred. This meant that with five tasters, each product could get a total score of 50.

So after much munching, crunching, and slurping, in what became a very messy kitchen here at lovemoney.com HQ, here’s how the results turned out!

The results

As the chart reveals, the majority of people did in fact prefer the branded versions of both the baked beans and toast. The Heinz baked beans apparently had a ‘creamy sauce’ and ‘better texture, colour and taste’, while the Tesco version was ‘chewy’ and ‘very dull’.

That said, one tester disagreed, and described the Heinz baked beans as ‘too salty’ and ‘very artificial’.

As for the toast, the Kingsmill version was described as ‘delicious’, while the Tesco version was ‘quite dry’.

But in a massive turnaround, it was the Tesco version of Fruit & Fibre that got the big thumbs up from most of our tasters, and the Kellogg’s version was far less popular. Interestingly, this also had the biggest price difference between all of our tasted products, with the Tesco Fruit & Fibre being £1.37 cheaper than the Kellogg’s version.

Comments for the Tesco cereal included ‘plenty of flavour and fruit’, while the Kellogg’s version was apparently ‘like eating the bottom of a rabbit hutch’. However, one tester disagreed and claimed the Tesco cereal flakes were soft, soggy and slimy, and it was ‘too sweet’. So obviously it's quite a subjective test!

As for the tea, well, this was a little harder to settle. Most of our tasters said they could barely tell the difference, with three out of the five testers having no preference at all. However, one of our testers, a self-proclaimed ‘tea connoisseur’, said that the PG Tips tea had a ‘good, strong flavour’ and ‘good colour’, while the Tesco version was ‘more watery’. The PG Tips version also got one extra point.

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The conclusion

Overall, I think this shows that for certain products, we’re bound to still love our favourite brand names – for me, baked beans and ketchup just have to be Heinz.

But for other products, such as tea and cereal, shifting down a brand may not have much of an effect on our taste buds, but it’s certainly likely to have an impact on our wallets – and a good one! After all, why pay an extra £1.37 for a box of cereal if the cheaper version is going to taste better?

So put your prejudices aside, and investigate whether you too could shift down a brand and save yourself some pennies!

Take the 'drop a brand challenge' with lovemoney.com

Still sceptical about whether you should drop a brand? Well, here's a little incentive. We challenge you to drop a brand for the next week, then tweet @lovemoney_com or @Frugal_Friday or leave a comment on our facebook fan page to tell us about how you found the experience, how much money you think you've saved and whether you'd recommend it. The best tweet/comment will win one of our lovemoney.com goodie bags! (Read the terms and conditions of the competition here before you enter.)

More: Ten ways to slash your supermarket spend | Five ways to pay less for your fruit and veg