Generic groceries now use the same ingredients as brands
Food
Blind taste tests now reveal that 85% of store-brand products are indistinguishable from their famous counterparts, thanks to shared production lines and identical recipes.
The next time you reach for a generic box of cereal, you might be buying the exact same toasted oats found in the colorful name-brand box next to it. For decades, grocery stores relied on lower-quality ingredients to keep costs down, but a massive shift in manufacturing has changed the math. Today, sensory panels find that 85% of private-label goods match the taste profiles of leading brands because they are often made by the same companies using the same raw materials.