• Date: November 27, 2021
  • Location: Thanksgiving Cabin 2021
  • Participants: Jenna, Jo, Keira, Matt B., Matt D., Rachel, Roberto, Tyler

Introduction

Many people purchase generic food brands to save money, stipulating that these products are as good as the name brand. The counterargument to this is that the name brands are better and it is worth spending a bit more to get the higher quality. The purpose of this experiment is to rate generic and name branch products side by side so see which comes out on top.

Method

We gathered 8 people to test 9 different products. For each product, a generic and name brand were taste tested and rated. Table 1 shows a full listing of products tested, listing the name brands and the generic brand they were compared to.

Product Name brand Generic
Sour cream and onion chips Lays, Utz Giant
Chocolate sandwich Oreo Giant
Vanilla ice cream PA Specialty (Expensive) Cheapest
Crunch cereal Cap N Crunch Malt O Meal
Cola Coke Food club
Dr. Pepper Dr. Pepper Giant
Sour Cream Daisy Best Yet
Berries crunch cereal Cap N Crunch Berries Malt O Meal
Multigrain cereal Life Giant

Table 1 - Products and name of brands used in these tests. Note that the ice cream was so freezer-burned that we did not note the brands.

The 8 tasters were split into 2 groups of 4 each. Each brand of product was sampled twice (4 total samples), except for a the sour cream and onion potato chips which were sampled 3 times each (9 total samples). The order of the samples was randomized by the person preparing the samples. In standard Science Saturday procedure, the tasters were blindfolded during tasting. For each sample They were asked to rate the food they were tasting on a scale of 1-5, 5 being delicious and 1 being awful. Not everyone participated in all of the samplings, so there were only 8 people maximum per food grouping.

Some additional method notes:

  • For the Oreos, some groups took special care to make sure that the person did not touch the outside pattern on the cookie.
  • The cereal was served either with milk or without milk, depending on the preference of the taster.
  • The sour cream was served on plain potato chips (Utz).
  • No special care was given to Utz, although they had ridges while the other two brands were flat chips.
  • Some additional off-shoot tests were done by a few people, but not enough people to get a large enough sample. These include:
    • Only eating berries from the cereal
    • Rum & coke with generic & name brand cola
    • Marshmallows

Results

The figures and tables below show the results of the testing. The figures show the overall average scores for each product. The error bars indicate the standard deviation of the scores.

The tables give the average score each taster gave the different product brands.

Sour cream and onion potato chips

  Lays Utz Generic
Jenna 1.75 2.00 3.75
Jo 2.33 5.00 3.75
Keira 2.00 3.67 3.33
Matt B. 2.50 4.67 2.00
Matt D. 3.67 3.33 3.67
Rachel 2.33 4.67 3.33
Roberto 2.67 5.00 4.00
Tyler 3.00 3.00 3.75

Chocolate sandwich cookies

  Oreo Generic
Rachel 3.50 3.50
Roberto 2.50 1.50
Jenna 3.50 3.50
Tyler 4.00 3.00
Keira 4.50 2.00
Matt B. 4.00 3.00

Vanilla ice cream

  Fancy Generic
Rachel 2.00 2.50
Jo 3.00 1.00
Roberto 3.50 2.00
Jenna 4.00 1.00
Tyler 3.00 3.00
Keira 4.00 3.50
Matt B. 3.50 3.00

Crunch cereal

  Captain Crunch Generic
Rachel 4.00 4.00
Jo 3.50 4.00
Jenna 5.00 5.00
Tyler 4.00 4.50
Keira 5.00 4.50

Cola

  Generic Coke
Rachel 3.50 3.50
Matt D. 2.00 3.50
Roberto 3.00 2.00
Tyler 1.00 4.00

Dr. Pepper

  Dr. Pepper Generic
Jenna 3.00 3.00
Jo 3.00 4.00
Keira 4.00 2.50
Matt B. 3.50 4.00
Matt D. 2.50 3.50
Rachel 2.50 1.50
Roberto 4.00 3.00
Tyler 4.00 2.00

Sour cream

  Generic Daisy
Rachel 2.67 3.33
Matt D. 3.00 3.00
Jo 4.00 4.50
Jenna 3.00 4.00
Keira 4.00 4.00

Multigrain cereal

| | Generic | Life | |———|———–|———| | Rachel | 3.50 | 3.50 | | Jo | 1.00 | 3.00 |