KEY POINTS:
Cheaper brands can be healthier and tastier than their better-known competitors, according to the results of a Herald on Sunday investigation.
We asked a working mother and a food writer to take part in a blind taste of six staples offered by Progressive Enterprises' Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown chains.
The duo tasted wheat breakfast biscuits, tinned fruit salad, raspberry jam, processed cheese slices, tinned tuna, and salted peanuts in three categories.
They compared Home Brand (budget) and Signature Range/Signature Range Select (premium budget) products with market leaders before a nutritionist had her say. The results weren't always what you might expect.
Both tasters picked the Home Brand 410g tin of fruit salad (85c) over the Wattie's equivalent ($2.18), with the market leader also ticked off by nutritionist Dr Libby Ellis for having the least percentage of fruit.
Ellis also noted Signature Range Select peanuts ($1.99 for 200g) were "far superior" healthwise to the Eta version ($2.61 for 200g).
Craig's raspberry jam ($2.46 for 375g), identified as the yummiest by both tasters, failed the nutrition test, containing more sugar than raspberries, a crime neither Home Brand ($2.49 for 680g) nor Signature Range Select ($3.99 for 680g) were guilty of.
In some categories, such as processed cheese slices and wheat breakfast biscuits, our tasters found it hard to find any difference.
A quick glance at the nutrition panel and ingredient lists by Ellis found two of the products were "identical", despite differences in price.
Food writer Amanda Krause expected to pick the market leader every time, but only got five out of six, choosing the Home Brand fruit salad as the clear winner in that category.
She deemed Signature Range "too sweet" and said the Wattie's product didn't appear to have as wide a variety of fruit.
In other categories, Krause struggled to taste any difference.
She picked Mainland cheese ($4.39 for 250g) as being "not quite as plasticy" as the in-house brands (Signature Range $3.59 for 250g, Home Brand $2.29 for 250g), though our nutritionist later claimed they were exactly the same product.
Krause found Signature Range Select peanuts to be the saltiest, although Eta, which she chose as the tastiest, had the most salt and sugar.
Reena Mathew, an Auckland mother who described herself as "brand conscious" when it came to the family shopping, picked an in-house budget brand as her taste favourite three times.
While she liked market leaders Weet-Bix, Craig's jam, and Sealord tuna, when it came to fruit salad, she, like Krause, also picked Home Brand as the clear winner.
The cheapest option was also her tastiest when it came to peanuts, while Signature Range won out when it came to cheese. "It's a thinner slice, to me they all taste the same".
Mathew said she was "very surprised" at the results, which would change her shopping habits.
"Especially the peanuts - they were so yummy."
Nutrition was more important than price in the Mathew household, she said, so discovering the more expensive brands were not always the healthiest, shocked her.
