Someone who is keen on saving money on food should leave no stones unturned, so to say. Anything which could save them should tried. So what about trying cheaper foods which you may never have tasted before? Would you try them? Fact is should you get to like these cheaper foods you could save a decent amount of money if eventually they replace more expensive foods you previously bought. Anyone tried it?
I regularly buy a supermarket's own value range for items such as rice and pasta. I tend to make a lot of things from scratch, so save money on buying 'convenience' foods. There are some ingredients that I think are of lower quality when you buy the cheaper goods, but the majority of the time you can't tell any difference.
For things like pasta and bread, I always buy the cheaper store brands to save myself a little cash. The store brand canned veggies and tomatoes are also good and you can't really tell the difference between them and the National brands. There are a lot of store brands I do steer clear of though because they taste much cheaper.
Sure! Be careful with buying too many super cheap foods without checking the labels, though. You may be hurting your health and costing yourself more if the foods aren't nutritious or are full of chemicals, etc.
What's kind of frustrating is that some cuts of meat, for example, which were traditionally considered cheaper cuts of meat and priced less as a result of such, have been climbing up in price in recent years as various food trends have been emerging. Buffalo wings used to be dirt cheap when I was younger, and now they are approaching almost $1 per wing at various restaurants - they used to be like 15 cents per wing when I was in high school. Even if you buy them fresh and cook them yourself, the packs of raw drumettes/wings are rather expensive too. Flank steak as well, was often regarded as a cheaper cut of meat years ago, but a pack of it at the store these days is often close to $20 if not more.
I usually do try and try out the cheaper brands since they are inexpensive and it wouldn't hurt too much to try. The only time I'm apprehensive about doing so if it's a product I know that will probably be too lacking in quality for me to enjoy. Products like canned corned beef, for example, are best to buy at an average or high price since anything lower will only turn out to taste bad and have bad texture, but for many other products like snacks and chips I definitely think they are worth at least trying out once to find out if they're good.
Some supermarket or nameless brand foods are produced in the same factory as the expensive brands. You're often paying premium price for nice packaging and marketing campaigns. Examples include biscuits and other dry products such as pasta. Other foods are objectively worth the price compared with store brands. Products I'm willing to pay more for are cheese, beer and meat. You can often discover the true origin of a product, simply by google the factory where it was produced ( labeled on the packaging).
I usually buy store brands or basic value brands rather than buying expensive brands. There are times I don't do this for example when the store brand is more expensive if I have a coupon but generally no, I'll stick to store brands. As for buying foods I've never tried before, I'm always doing that to save a little money. I often buy a different brand or different flavour. I actually bought some apple and raspberry juice this week because it was cheap and I found I actually love the combination together, although I never thought I would!
Yeah, this is really frustrating. I know that hot wings became really popular in bars and they're considered a higher cut of meat now, but they used to be the cheapest in a store to buy. My mother would never cook them even because she thought they were disgusting and not worth even the cheap price. Now, I have to pay prices similar to better cuts of meat....both chicken and in other meat departments.
I'm always game to try cheaper foods. That's what led to me trying chicken livers a few years ago, and I realized that I love them. With groceries, I'll try any generic brand at least once, and if I like it, it gets added to my monthly master grocery list.
Well... If you live in America, meat is still in generally much cheaper than the actual cost of it, because of the various subsidies. Seriously. Think about some cheap meat you get. A lot of fruits and veggies can be cheaper than ground meat on special! If you take into account the fact that an animal was raised, fed, tons of water were used, transportation... and the actual fact that we kill animals to get meat... I mean, when we compare the actual prices to what we actually get, it's dirt cheap. I might be sounding preachy, but I'm not trying to be. I do kind of wish that meat was sold at its actual price (which would be higher than now) -- it would make people think twice about it, and not just buy invariably huge amounts to devour (way more than we need for nutrition, we don't really need much if any at all) and also waste it.
I don't think there's any hurt in trying cheaper foods at least once. Who knows, maybe you'll actually like it more than the name-brand product you normally buy? I've had that happen to me on more than one occasion. For most people though, they have to find some of these cheaper foods to stay on a reasonable budget. It just makes more sense financially.
Sometimes I can't even tell the difference between the cheap food and the food that's more expensive. My parents got a deal once where they had to buy a family pack of meat and then they got a bunch of free stuff. Well, in that free stuff they got knock off brand hot dogs and it turned out that I really liked them. Sometimes it's not bad trying food that isn't as expensive because like me, you might like it more.
When I was trying to save money buying my own food, I bought the cheapest canned goods, since I don't know how to cook. They taste ok, but when it comes to corned beef, you can really tell the difference between the cheap and expensive corned beef. The cheap corned beef really tastes cheap and inferior as compared to the expensive ones.
Sometimes I prefer the cheaper generic versions to the branded versions. It really does pay off to give them a shot. Occasionally there’ll be a product where the branded version is far superior, but I’ve found that those tend to be processed, snacky-type foods, which I try to avoid anyway. Occasionally you just gotta eat the Cheez-Its, though.
