GENERIC GROCERIES - Tuesday 18 March 2008

Simple Savings Debbie Eustace started including generics in her shopping four years ago. She's got an interesting way to minimising the risk of buying a dud no name product.

"The product that has more ingredients in it - say the meat pies, pizza, lasagne - they're the ones you need to be wary of," warned Debbie.

When trying out products for the first time, Debbie says go for ones which you'll use in cooking.

"Cheese. If you're just going to use cheese in cooking you don't need to have the top quality cheese to be grated over the top of your home made lasagne."

Some of the most popular lines of generics are your basics like flour, sugar, butter, soft drink, and toilet paper.

At IGA generics cost at least 25% less than brand label lines and the savings quickly add up. We compared two baskets, of 16 items, which included cereal, potato chips, detergent, spaghetti, rice crackers, rice, nuts, pasta sauce and the good old choccie biscuit.

The generics cost $18 less.

But a word of warning - if we all buy only generics, many experts fear there'll come a day, when supermarket shelves will be ruled by no-name brands.

"In the long run we really need to be careful of our purchasing habits of these generic products because one day we may not have a choice," stressed QUT Marketing Lecturer Dr Edwina Luck.