Have you ever wondered if the brand of food you are buying is really the best tasting option on the grocery store shelf? Twice a month, my wonderful brother-in-law, Richard, provides us with an organized taste test for the Winterton family as part of our extended family Sunday dinner. The taste test results are often surprising to me in that I am NOT a generic food buyer. I do LOVE to save money and am a real professional when it comes to money saving strategies, I organized my mind years ago to believe the name brand foods were superior in quality.

The Winterton taste test clan typically consists of 8 voting adults. We meet at my Mom-in-law’s home for her great meals. Richard organizes his blind taste test as an appetizer OR an after dinner snack.

  • His goal is to see if we can figure out which is the generic brand
  • My goal is to decide if the generic brand is as good as the name brand variety

Richard is a Target Store Shopper, so the generic brands he provides for our taste tests are either Archer Farms or Market Pantry. Last week we tested 1) microwave popcorns and 2) cashews.

  • The name brand popcorns were Pop Secret and Orville Redenbacher’s
  • The name brand cashews were Planters
OK…drum roll…Are you ready for the results?
Popcorn – There was no difference in quality between the popcorns. The popped corn was cold, so of the options offered, a large majority of us preferred the NO FAT TARGET MARKET PANTRY generic brand over the Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Theater OR Pop Secret’s Movie Theater OR Double Butter types
Cashews – There was no difference in quality between the cashews. The Planters brand looked to be darker in color and seemed to taste saltier. We actually preferred the Target Market Pantry generic brand. It tasted and looked a little less oily.
Are you as surprised as I was? Generic really did win out this week in Richard’s organized taste tests.
Leave a comment telling me YOUR favorite generic brand foods.
Even though I am a professional know-it-all Utah organizer, this week I struck out.
Stay tuned for other Winterton family taste tests.
Organized and executed by Richard, our family computer whiz.

3 Responses to “Taste Test”

  1. AndrewBoldman Says:
    June 4th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    I really liked this post. Can I copy it to my site? Thank you in advance.

  2. Vicki Winterton Says:
    July 20th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    So glad you liked it Andrew!
    All my readers may use any complete printed blog entry as long as they link to this site and list my business name (ORGANIZING Mind over Matter) and my name (Vicki Winterton) as the source of the informatoin.

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    February 26th, 2010 at 3:14 am

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