Is he a brand snob, or am I just cheap?

It pains me to admit it, but my husband is a complete brand snob when it comes to food.

When food shopping, he will always pick up the premium brand items of each product - he doesn't even look at the alternatives. It drives me crazy because when those brands aren't on offer, it sometimes works out twice as expensive as the store-own brand!

I moved out of my parents house over 20 years ago, and the only way I could afford to live in the early years was by watching the budget. And the easiest way to trim back a little I find is from your food shopping. Although I am not living on the breadline anymore, I do still want value for money, and I don't like to pay more than I have to for stuff.

Generally, when food shopping, I'll go for the store own brand unless the premium brand is on special offer. I regularly buy from the budget / economy ranges, I find most of the budget alternatives are absolutely great. There are a few items in the budget range that I have tried and not got along with, but most are great. There are also some products where I absolutely have to have premium brand (some sauces, coffee, baked beans), the rest of the stuff in my cupboard is store brand.

So back to my husband being a brand snob:

There is a particular breakfast cereal that he loves. He gets through a box in about three days so it is a regular on the weekly shopping list. I won't name the cereal, but it is a well known popular cereal in the uk.

One week when our food shopping was delivered (sometimes I get home delivery when we have busy weeks at work), the branded cereal was out of stock, so the supermarket own brand was delivered as a substitute. I didn't think anything of it and put the box in the cupboard.

My spoilt brat of a husband wouldn't eat them. They sat in the cupboard for weeks. I had some and genuinely you couldn't tell the difference.

He kept asking me "could you please get me some cereal when you go shopping". I'd tell him "there's some in the cupboard"... he still wouldn't eat it.

That box of cereal sat in the cupboard for about 6 months until it got stale and was thrown away.

What a waste!

And I wondered - if it hadn't been for the packaging, would he have noticed?

So I decided to find out.

Since January, I have been running a few of my own little experiments. I have been feeding him store own brand and economy range stuff to see if he genuinely doesn't like the products, or if he just doesn't like the idea of them.... and there honestly hasn't been a single thing he's had that he hasn't liked. So yep, he's a brand snob.

(I should say that I wouldn't feed him something he didn't like and if he asked me what something was, I would tell him! I'm not awful!)

I don't know if doing this makes me seem cheap, or devious or what, but it's certainly been eye opening! And it makes a difference. As an example, for a jar of English mustard:

Premium brand: 85p
Supermarket own brand: 22p
Economy range: 17p

And in a ham sandwich, you really can't tell the difference between the three!

There's my confession..... does that make me awful?

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