Bargain Betty: Budget brands have a value

Photo / Greg Bowker

Here's an admission: I feed my children supermarket own-brand foods. Yes, I have no shame about filling my trolley with Budget, Home Brand, Signature Range or Pams products.

It makes financial sense. And when my children cotton on that it might not be quite so cool to plonk blue-and-white packages on the conveyer belt, I'll explain to them that vanity makes people buy San Remo instead of Budget lasagne.

Often the budget products are produced in the same factories as the branded version. You're just not paying the advertising and marketing costs.

Brand decisions are often emotional and your emotions get a pummelling from the advertising industry. But I admit there are some products where I don't buy own-brand. Tuna may be tuna but curry pastes aren't, and I'm afraid that the shockingly expensive Patak's gets my vote.

When comparing supermarket brands I always read the labels, Wendyl Nissen-style. If the Budget or Pams product have more artificial ingredients, or fewer healthy ones, I buy the brand.

Likewise, I can understand anyone eschewing budget-brand battery eggs in favour of producers that take better care of their hens or produce organically.

I once mentioned in a blog that I feed my cat budget brands. Oh the outrage from readers that I could treat an animal so cruelly. I almost thought they were going to report me to the SPCA. Oddly enough, no one complained about me feeding my children own-brand food.

Finally, for years I've bought Watties/Heinz baked beans for the children after reading an article that said a can of Heinz beans was found to contain more beans than the Tesco own-brand.

For a bit of Friday frivolity, and to point out to myself that assumptions need to be tested, I counted 311 beans in a Budget can and 430 in a Watties can.