Be Excellent To Each Other

I did a little experiment this week, and bought only 'value' or 'Tesco' versions of the food we normally have.
My conclusions so far:

Value Cola: Avoid
Value Mayo: Avoid
Value Full-flavoured Cheddar Cheese: Very nice, actually.

What other 'value' foods are practically indistinguishable from their higher-priced equivalents?

I actually prefer value lemonades, despite actually tasting just like chemicals. Much, much cheaper, too.

Value beans are fine. Avoid value cornflakes at all cost.

i still have to get the proper sauces (ketchup brown etc ) the rest is either store own or value.

Tesco's own brand import larger is fairly reasonable. I've certainly paid a lot more for worse.

Sainsbury's Diet Cola is the only cola my wife and I both like.

We have a lot of Sainsbury's Basics stuff, too, which is mostly pretty good, especially given the price. Their chicken roll is horrific, though.

Value cheese spread is nice in Tescos.
Half of Tescos Value meals are nice (chicken curry,sweet and sour chicken,cauliflower cheese,fisherman's pie)the rest are repulsive.
Tesco's value loo paper is not soft or strong or particularly long but it does the job.

I don't buy much "value" foods, they are generally pretty nasty.

Easting for cheap the LewieP way:

Currys made from a variety of:
Lentils, Chick peas, other types of beans, peas, sweetcorn, onion, and from time to time chicken. With rice.

Cheap but very very nice fresh Tortelloni pasta from lidl (65p a pack and if it tastes better than any from any other supermarket).

Special offers and clearance stuff.

I spend very little on food, and eat pretty well.

Value tomatos
Potatoes
Beans (require a touch of draining)
Chips
Crisps (well the ones from sainsburys)
Squash (you need a touch more than usual, but still fine)
Pasta - fine
onions - fine
Meat is a bit iffy.... if you have mince, drain it, it's fine in a chilli/spag bol, but stuff like chicken isnt great.
Erm....
Biscuits are good and cheap
Most tinned goods...
Bread is ok, but better off going to aldi, as their bread is not as bad when not toasted (it actually tastes like bread)

I could go on, but I wont

"Value" foods, fuck me I'd be on my last pennies before I started eating like a student.

Going to Aldi or Lidl is one thing, but some of the shit that goes into "value" brands is unbelievable. A couple of years ago there was a programme that looked at how food was made. The "value" meat pies and fruit pies were totally shocking. The "value" Apple pie from one major supermarket turned out to be little more than a load of chemicals, gelatine and synthetic crap encased in cheap pastry derived from animal fats.

Anyone would think that was the point of this thread.

The Tribe approve of Morrison's basic carrots.

We had some Asda cheap cheap chicken the other day and it was rank! It was almost crunchy.. Which is the best way I can describe it.... So avoid.

I get all my meat from teh butchers...

The 'value' tuna seems ok

Yeah, Aldi/Lidl in terms of price are somewhere between value and standard Asda/Tesco stuff, but the quality is far better.

I have never seen an Aldi store, but I went to Lidl with someone once and it smelled of rank dead things.

Once, my mother worked as a kitchen manager in a large high school. During the first week of the six week summer holiday a visiting asian wedding party fiddled with the fuse box type thingy so as the sound system and lights did not blow the electricity. What they did, in short, was to switch off the power to the kitchens, which included five chest freezers, two of which were full of meat.

The electricity was not put back on.

Five weeks later I agreed to help my mother open up the kitchens and do a stock check before new term.

Lidl smells of opening the doors to those kitchens.

The one near me doesn't smell at all.

You are very strange. Now go and stand in the corner until you are less so.

On foods;

Tesco serial equivalents to Sugar Puffs are pretty good although the Frosties are a poor facsimile.
Tesco pressed orange doesn't taste quite as nice as Tropicana but it's very close. Same goes for concentrated apple juice - own brand all the way.
Tesco light soft cheese is some rank old shite.
Tesco finest multiseed bread is cheaper than Hovis Wholemeal and miles nicer - not a discount brand as such but worth noting.
We don't buy any ready meals but they would be something I would steer clear of at discount prices having had a mate who worked at a factory preparing them for the lower end of the market. Tumbled chicken with extra water anyone?
Having said that I am from't North so we do get chips in and Tesco's low fat oven chips are miles tastier than the McCain equivalent.

On other stuff

We buy pretty much all supermarket own brand toiletries as you really are paying a right old premium for branding of Lynx, Adidas or Pantene etc. My Sainsbury's brand razor is pretty good and a fraction of the price for blades compared to funding Gillette's advertising budget.

Same goes for batteries (yesterday was an exception - 4 packets of £2.89 AA Energizers for £5 in Tescos - mental) and medicines - ranitidine and ibuprofen are the exact same doses as their branded rivals only cost peanuts compared to a small fucking fortune.

Uh-oh!

I'm talking the extra light variety. Philadelphia manage to reduce the fat without turning it into watery gloop. I can't comment on the full fat version.

Easiest thing is the toast test - spread some low fat spread (butter or cheese) onto your toast - if you end up with a surface that falls to bits you might as well have run it under the tap.

Tell me it wasn't the Noon factory; they do pretty much every supermarket's own-brand curries (including Lidl) and I always have a few in the freezer in case I fancy a jazlfrezi at extra-short notice. Not sure what I'd do if I found out I couldn't eat their meals with a clear conscience. Probably nothing, actually.

I've not been able to eat a packaged chicken kiev since I found out about the conditions in which they are born. Picture production lines made up of people in jumpsuits and masks wading about in ankle deep disinfectant with spades, shovelling the bits of garlic butter that fall off the machines onto the floor back in to minimise losses. Nightmare.

My local Aldi is a deeply depressing place. Huge mountains of no brand tuna or mayonnaise. Darkly lit. Smelly.

I can totally endorse own brand medicines: You can get a box of cold and flu sachets in Tesco for about £2, whereas the same amount of paracetamol can be found in Lemsip but at near double the price.

Yeah but soft cheese is not cheese spread and that sounds like the standard Tesco range not the value option.

I am not really into soft cheese so I wouldn't know. Cheese spread with Marmite is fannytastic though.

Yes, this sounds like comparing Philadelphia with Dairylea.

(On the subject of light soft cheese, Philadelphia Light = nice, but Philadelphia Extra Light = gelatinous gunk.)

Fuck "light". Fuck it in the arse. Full fat in moderation and a bit of exercise. Fuck "light".

See also: "Lite", "Diet", "reduced fat" and "low fat". Oh, and "caffeine free".

I'm with "Wogan's wee man" on this. Light's for people who like bland food & it leads to chronic gayness. That's what happened to Gill, she woke up one morning & put the wrong Phillie on her toast. TRUFAX!

I must point out that the old Coke Light sold in Germany and Spain was fucking gorgeous, much nicer than Coke or Diet Coke. I believe that its now been replaced with hideous Diet Coke...

Philadelphia

I don't really eat low fat or light stuff either. I also hate caffeine free coke but I can understand the point of it because too much caffeine makes me ill

Urgh, Diet Coke just isn't Coke. It's an entirely different flavour!

The saga of Coca Cola:

First there was Coke.
It was really sugary, so there was a demand for a diet version, but Coke with sweeteners instead of sugar didn't taste right, so they reformulated the recipe around the sweeteners: Diet Coke
Then Coke was losing its lead to Pepsi, so they took the popular Diet Coke as a base, and swapped sweeteners back for sugar, and then remixed the result to create the infamous New Coke (which bomber even though it tasted better to most people than old coke... go figure)
Recently, new sweetener tricks, and the legacy of Coke's feminine targetted ad campaigns for Diet Coke, have lead to the production of Coke Zero, which is Coke with all the sugar replaced by sweeteners.

I like Philadelphia Light much more than normal Philadelphia.

My cat's breath smells of Coke Zero.

Don't forget about Coke Raw, which is actually really rather nice.

Pepsi raw?

Not heard of a Coke version. If it is out there I will have to check it out

If you mean Pepsi Raw, you and Mr Chris need to arm-wrestle.

Would the winner or loser there take the crown? I'm not sure.

Do - Sainsbury's own brand Lemonade, my favourite soft-drink.

Don't - never, ever, consider any form of store-brand rice pudding. Ambrosia or nothing.

It's not as sickly and pastey.

Oh yeah, I generally get most light/health versions stuff too.

With anything sweet, I find them nicer (I don't like stuff that is too sweet, so whilst I don't really like fizzy drinks, I prefer Diet Coke to regular), and with most other stuff I either can't taste a difference, or can taste a difference, but don't have a preference.

Aldi cloudy lemonade. 39p for 1.5 litres and no sweeteners. Hoorah for Aldi!

Sainsbury's Basics rice pudding looks disgusting, but tastes pretty good.

I've not been there for a couple of years, but through most of the last decade, Iceland were the kings of deceptively tasty bargain food. Ignore their fresh section, naturally, as it's pretty much a formality, but their frozen and less-persishable stuff is generally the best going for the price. Or was, anyway. There's not one really near us, annoyingly.

Otherwise, it depends. If you're looking for big things you can go cheaper, but if you're looking for ingredients whose texture or consistency or subtleties of flavour are really important (eg: tomatoes for sauces), you can get caught out.

Own brand chocolate is usually nice anywhere - frankly I find cadbury's revoltingly sweet.

As for mains.. .well to be honest, it's generally best to ask yourself this question about each thing you're thinking of buying - "How bad could [food substance x] get?" With things like bread, pasta, biscuits, yoghurt, crisps, fruit etc, there's a lower limit that's far above edible, and often close to, or even superior to regular stuff. With things like sausages, chicken, or margarine... well, you probably won't want to know the answer.

If it's a desperate budget situation, stick with veg, and pep it up with things like chilli or pepper (you can get pre-chopped jars of chilli in vinegar that look expensive, but weight for weight are far cheaper and easier than buying chilli or powder, and taste more consistent. They also last for months as opposed to days. The downside is that you will have to fight your housemates for them when they realise how tasty they are), and buy the odd quorn burger or pastie or a bit of ham if you really miss the meat.

Speaking of which, cheap supermarket picnic food usually just means more pastry and veg rather than nastier meat. Morrisons pasties are mostly veg, but are really quite nice.

Oh yeah, and stick with own or obscure brands for chemical stuff like deodorant, shampoo etc. (exception is medically important stuff like toothpaste) - the poncey expensive stuff is exactly the same as the 99p own stuff, especially if it has a pointlessly flashy bottle. Just watch it for wateriness with the shampoos.

Good stuff SA.
For ultra cheap chilliness, buy a bag of dried chillies from a chinese supermarket. Costs about a quid, spices up any meal and will last about 5 years.

Aldi have some surprisingly good stuff in their range - I wouldn't ever want to eat meat from there, but their veg tends to be alright, and their biscuits and chocolates and stuff are amazing, as they tend to come from continental Europe where they make much, much better biscuits than we do in England (apart from Hobnobs, naturally).

Oh my word, .

I once had a sort of mini-argument with my friend in Superdrug - she wanted Nurofen (which of course is just ibuprofen), and I said, that's £2 or whatever, so why don't you get Superdrug's own brand for about 40p? She said no, she wanted Nurofen - I said but Nurofen's just a name, and the actual drug is ibuprofen, etc etc, and so on. I went as far as showing her the back of both packets, in a vain attempt to convince her they were THE SAME, but she wasn't having it.

Oh well.

Anyway, I quite like some supermarket's own versions of Lilt and such, though some are disgusting, and just remind you why it's worth spending full whack to get actual real Lilt.

Oh yeah, I forgot about medicines entirely. Totally agree with Trousers and Starling. Always find out what the active ingredients are. Find the non-name brand with the same in, and it'll do the same, give or take slight differences in efficacy that happen between all similar tablets regardless of price. Hayfever tablets in particular - you can spend three times as much on the named brands for nothing but a prettier box.

As mentioned, Aldi and Lidl (and even netto to a lesser extent) are great for obscure polish and german sweets and snacks and general 'cupboard' food. Also if there are any indian or chinese or polish shops/markets near you, have a look aruond, and don't be shy to ask stuff - they really don't care if you don't know what stuff is, but if they tell you, they might get a sale. Bring a friend along if it helps.

Yeah, except, it turns out your friend is right. Hateful and illogical as it may seem, more expensive painkillers in fancy packaging work better than cheap painkillers in plain packaging with exactly the same active ingredients. The Bad Science book has the relevant citations, but it's basically placebo effect being a complete bitch again. No, I don't like it any more than you do, but it is apparently the case.

Ooh! Tesco's "Yeast Spread" (Marmite) is like a super-strong version of Marmite. So, you know, ace.