Budget brands offer good nutrition

Budget brands: Good for you?

Shoppers buying supermarket "value" brands are not eating less healthily, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The study by Health Which? reveals that taste-testers found it difficult to pick out the cheaper label and in terms of nutrition they were mostly on level terms.

Many consumers believe the quality of budget products is not as high as supermarkets' own-brands, but the study found a significantly lower nutritional difference in just one of the five product types examined.

A perfect example was one of the nation's favourite foodstuffs - baked beans.

Nutritional value wasn't compromised, and many of the value brands rated well on taste too

Felicity Porritt, Health Which?

The magazine's own bean-counters discovered that while budget beans generally had around a fifth fewer beans in them - they were generally half the price.

Other testers looked at staples such as digestive biscuits, long-life orange juice, and ready salted crisps.

They found that taste tests generally placed the budget brands at least equal to - and sometimes ahead of the supposedly superior supermarket own brand.

And despite the lower price, nutritionally, they were virtually the same.

The only noticeable differences were the lack of resealable containers in the case of the orange juice - which limited its shelf life once opened at home.

Wasted juice

Felicity Porritt, Health Which? senior researcher, said: "In four out of five budget products Health Which? looked at, nutritional value wasn't compromised, and many of the value brands rated well on taste too."

There was one problem area - yoghurt.

There was virtually double the amount of protein between standard and cheaper yoghurts at Tesco and Asda - and the level in Asda's "smartprice" yoghurt was so low it broke the industry's code of practice.

Asda has agreed to reformulate the yoghurt in response to the findings.

Budget yoghurt also fared badly in the taste testing stakes.

Ms Porritt said: "If you like the taste, and differences in packaging aren't a problem, then go for value brands if you want to save money - they're worth it."