New study shows filling a shopping cart with store brands saves an average of 30 percent on groceries 
 
 YONKERS, N.Y., Sept. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Store brand products can compete with their name-brand counterparts and save shoppers more than a thousand dollars a year on grocery bills, according to a new study from Consumer Reports. In 21 head-to-head taste match-ups, national brands won seven times, the store brand came out on top in three instances, and the remainder resulted in ties. The article can be found on www.consumerreportsenespanol.org. 
 
 "The study reaffirms that store brands are worth a try," said Tod Marks, senior projects editor for Consumer Reports. "For a family that spends $100 a week on groceries, the savings could add up to more than $1,500 a year." 
 
 Consumer Reports' price study evaluated five supermarket chains and compared store- and name-brand prices for 30 everyday items at five chains, collecting a total of 283 price quotes. Consumer Reports found the average savings with store brands was 30 percent, but shoppers saved as much as 52 percent on some items. 
 
 Store-brand stigma 
 
 Although the savings are significant, some shoppers are still reluctant to try store-brand products, according to a Consumer Reports nationally-represented survey. The top reasons for those who don't buy store brands are: "I prefer name brands," "The name brand tastes better," and "I don't know if store brands are as high in quality." Respondents 18 to 39 years old were particularly likely to question the quality of store brands. 
 
 Still, 84 percent of Americans purchased store brands in the past year, and 93 percent of store-brand shoppers said they would keep buying as many store brands after the economy recovers. Nationwide, store brands accounted for almost one of four products sold in supermarkets and a record $55.5 billion in sales last year. 
 
 Consumer Reports found nutrition similar for most of the tested products, despite the perception among 17 percent of survey respondents who said that "name-brand foods are more nutritious." The most notable differences: Mott's applesauce has more sugar than Publix, Ore-Ida fries have more sodium than Jewel, and Kellogg's Froot Loops have 3 grams of fiber vs. 1 gram in Stop & Shop Fruit Swirls. 
 
 Shoppers are devoted to certain categories as well. Though they'll purchase store-brand paper goods and plastics, at least half of respondents rarely or never buy store-brand wine, pet food, soda, or soup. But Consumer Reports trained testers found that when it came to products like soup, the name brand didn't always reign: 
 
 Chicken soup : Food Lion's ( 36 cents per serving) Lotsa' Noodles soup beat out Campbell 's Chicken Noodle ( 41 cents per serving) for having a little more intense flavor. Campbell 's had oily broth, with fatty pieces of chicken. 
 
 : Food Lion's ( per serving) Lotsa' Noodles soup beat out 's Chicken Noodle ( per serving) for having a little more intense flavor. 's had oily broth, with fatty pieces of chicken. Orange juice : Publix Premium won over Tropicana for having a bit less of a cooked flavor with slightly less bitter taste. 
 
 : Publix Premium won over Tropicana for having a bit less of a cooked flavor with slightly less bitter taste. Hot dogs: America's Choice (A&P, $2.64 per package) beef hot dogs trumped Oscar Mayer ( $3.65 per package) for their juicy and flavorful franks. 
 
 Name brands did win in seven of the categories, including mayonnaise, mozzarella cheese, and frozen French fries, but the majority of the match-ups found that the store brand and name brand were of similar quality. A tie doesn't mean the taste was identical. Two products may be equally fresh and flavorful, with ingredients of similar quality, but taste dissimilar because the recipe or seasonings differ. Some products that tied include: 
 
 Ketchup: Heinz ( $2.76 per bottle) is spicier, while Target's Market Pantry ( $1.174 per bottle) brand is more tomatoey. 
 
 Heinz ( per bottle) is spicier, while Target's Market Pantry ( per bottle) brand is more tomatoey. Peanut butter: Tasters detected more deeply roasted nuts in Skippy ( 19 cents per serving), while Albertsons ( 15 cents per serving) has a hint of molasses flavor. 
 
 Tasters detected more deeply roasted nuts in Skippy ( per serving), while Albertsons ( per serving) has a hint of molasses flavor. Potato chips: Both Lays ( 29 cents per serving) and Walmart's Great Value ( 15 cents per serving) have a nice balance of real potato flavor, fat, and saltiness. 
 
 Significant Savings 
 
 National brands are generally pricier than store brands, not so much because of what's in the package but because of the cost of developing the product and turning it into a household name. 
 
 There's no reason store brands shouldn't hold their own, since some companies manufacture both, including Sara Lee, Reynolds, 4C, McCormick, Feit, Manischewitz, Joy Cone, Stonewall Kitchen, and Royal Oak. Plus, most grocers offer a money-back guarantee if their products can't meet the consumer's expectations. (National brands stand behind their products too, of course). 
 
 Despite the savings, the price advantage may be narrowing. In recent years, some national-brand makers have lowered prices and stepped up promotional activities. The full results on how all the brands stacked up, Consumer Reports' study are available in the October issue on newsstands September 7 and online at www.ConsumerReports.org. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 2010 
 
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 SOURCE Consumer Reports ||||| It's been a long time since store brands were relegated to the bottom shelf of the grocery store, saddled with those generic black-and-white labels ("Ketchup," "Pickles") that made them look like provisions in a Soviet commissary.Still, despite fancier labels, a lot of shoppers are leery of anything that doesn't sport a name brand. "That's just plain silly," your penny-pinching grandmother might have said. "You're just paying for the name."According to the findings of a recent study by Consumer Reports , it turns out that she might have been right.The consumer watchdog that's better known for road testing cars and troubleshooting cell phones has turned its attention to the grocery store. The group had tasters sample 21 different food products and compare national brands with their store-brand equivalents.The results?Store brands either beat or tied their national-brand counterparts 14 times, with store brands trouncing such iconic household names as Campbell's, Tropicana, and Oscar Mayer.And as Consumer Reports points out, picking up a few store brands here and there can save big bucks. The magazine's survey found that store brands cost an average of 30 percent less than their national-brand equivalents."The study reaffirms that store brands are worth a try," said Tod Marks, senior projects editor for Consumer Reports. "For a family that spends $100 a week on groceries, the savings could add up to more than $1,500 a year." ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 CAMDEN, N.J. — Food companies tinker with the signature products in their portfolios at their own risk — and few products are as classic as Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Now, Campbell Soup is altering its famous broth. The new recipe appears first in a limited-edition line in cans festooned with Chewbacca and other figures from the coming “Star Wars” film. The new version of its chicken noodle soup contains 20 ingredients, most of which can be found in the average home kitchen, compared with 30 in its previous incarnation (sold last year in cans featuring the Avengers). 
 
 “We’re closing the gap between the kitchen and our plants,” said Denise M. Morrison, chief executive of Campbell. 
 
 Under Ms. Morrison’s leadership, which began in 2011, Campbell has moved quickly to address changing trends in food and to try to stanch the gradual decline in unit sales, a measurement of the number of cans of soup sold. 
 
 The company is banishing ingredients that today’s consumers don’t like and using advertising and social media to have a conversation with consumers about what it is doing. Acquisitions have also given Campbell toeholds in new markets and brought new ideas to the organization. 
 
 “Before, when we talked about our business, we talked about how many cases we shipped,” Ms. Morrison said in an interview here in her office. “Today, we’re talking about our food” — as in what’s in it, where it comes from and what impact it has on the environment. 
 
 Changing those traditional recipes carries quite a bit of risk. 
 
 “It’s a delicate balance because these products are beloved,” said Charles Vila, vice president for consumer and customer insights at Campbell. “Their profile has become very defined in the consumer mind over the years, so any change we make is very carefully considered.” 
 
 The company also has an incentive to bolster the anemic sales of soup, its core product. 
 
 Globally, soup sales peaked in 2012 at $16.2 billion and have stagnated since, last year ringing up $16 billion, according to Euromonitor, a consumer research firm. Euromonitor estimates that sales will fall further this year, to a little over $15 billion. 
 
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 Continue reading the main story What’s New in Campbell’s Chicken Soup? The new version of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup contains just 20 listed ingredients, most of which can be found in the average home kitchen, compared with 30 in its previous incarnation. Items in green appear on the new label but not on the old. Bryan Thomas for The New York Times Chicken stock 
 
 Enriched pasta (wheat flour, egg whites, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) 
 
 Carrots 
 
 Chicken meat 
 
 Chicken fat 
 
 Salt 
 
 Modified food starch 
 
 Potassium chloride 
 
 Monosodium glutamate 
 
 Chicken flavor 
 
 Maltodextrin 
 
 Water 
 
 Dehydrated mechanically separated chicken 
 
 Celery 
 
 Onions 
 
 Vegetable oil Flavoring 
 
 Yeast extract 
 
 Cornstarch 
 
 Dehydrated chicken broth 
 
 Sugar 
 
 Beta carotene for color 
 
 Dehydrated onions 
 
 Soy protein isolate 
 
 Sodium phosphate 
 
 Disodium inosinate 
 
 Disodium guanylate 
 
 Lactic acid 
 
 Spice 
 
 Flavoring (soybean oil, soy lecithin) 
 
 Dehydrated chicken 
 
 Onion extract 
 
 Garlic extract 
 
 Reasons for soup’s slump are hard to pin down, said Emily Balsamo, a research analyst at Euromonitor. “It’s a similar situation in a lot of categories, I would say, where I think there’s just a lot of distrust of larger, established food companies,” Ms. Balsamo said. Within the soup category, and even within the canned soup category, smaller brands like Annie’s and Amy’s Kitchen or Hain Celestials are doing relatively better, she said. “Maybe it has something to do with them being largely organic.” 
 
 In fact, Ms. Balsamo said, early sales of Campbell’s new line of organic soup sold in cartons are strong. 
 
 But Campbell, which largely relies on the United States market for its soup sales, has more to lose than most other big companies selling soup. Campbell Soup accounted for almost three-quarters of the $1.6 billion in condensed soup sales here last year, but its unit sales fell more than 5 percent, according to IRI, a data and research firm. The company also dominates the ready-to-eat soup business, but there, too, it lost more than 5 percent of market share last year. (Campbell has attributed some of the decline to reductions it made in promotional deals with grocery chains.) 
 
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 Other big soup producers like General Mills, which makes the Progresso brand, and private-label soup brands also declined in sales. IRI data shows, on the other hand, that Pacific Foods of Oregon, a maker of organic soup, is gaining market share. 
 
 Ms. Morrison speaks more candidly than most of her peers about the impact that changing consumer preferences and demographics are having on Campbell and other large food companies, which she described as “seismic shifts.” 
 
 Photo 
 
 “There are 80 million millennials now, and they’re shopping and thinking differently about food and in a way that is influential,” she said. 
 
 She said changes in the family are also challenging food companies. “Families now are multicultural, multigenerational, single-parent, same-sex, mixed and traditional,” Ms. Morrison said. 
 
 She also noted that the numbers of middle-class consumers, who powered sales for so long, were shrinking. “Food companies largely serve the mainstream, but there’s a shrinking middle class in the U.S., a widening chasm between the haves and have-nots,” Ms. Morrison said. 
 
 About a year after Ms. Morrison took the helm, Campbell shocked its peers by buying Bolthouse, a maker of juice and salad dressings, and overnight became one of the world’s largest carrot growers. Bolthouse gave Campbell entree to the coveted perimeter of the grocery store at a time when consumers were increasingly shunning the middle aisles that were long home to the company’s products. 
 
 The next year, Campbell bought Plum Organics, a fast-growing producer of pouched baby and children’s foods that deftly uses social media to connect with consumers. In the last year, 40 percent of Campbell’s advertising budget has gone to social media and digital advertising, in large part based on what it has learned from Plum, according to Mark Alexander, president of the company’s United States business. 
 
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 Campbell then opened an avenue into China with the purchase of the Kelsen Group, a Danish maker of cookies and snacks with an impressive footprint in Asia. And this year, Campbell acquired the tiny Garden Fresh Gourmet, a purveyor of refrigerated salsas and dips, in a nod to the growth of snacking. 
 
 At the same time, Campbell has added new products like Skillet Sauces, sold in pouches, and Slow Kettle soups in tubs — just heat and eat. Such products play the same role in America’s kitchen as Campbell’s soup did in the past, offering kitchen cooks shortcuts and busy consumers a quick meal. 
 
 “We’ve really accelerated our innovation program,” Mr. Alexander said, referring to the company’s simple meals and beverage business in the United States. “About 11 or 12 percent of our sales last year came from products launched in the last three years, compared to mid-single digits in the past.” 
 
 Campbell is retooling its traditional portfolio as rapidly as it can. “The biggest challenge was time,” said Jesse Fellows, a senior technologist for product development at Campbell, who was charged with simplifying chicken noodle soup. 
 
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 It took two months of intense work to come up with the balance of ingredients that would produce a broth and noodles that tasted the same or better than the soup that had been produced the same way since 2011, when Campbell’s adjusted the spices and reduced the beta carotene used to impart color. 
 
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 Those were relatively simple changes. Mr. Fellows was asked for a more thorough overhaul aimed at getting rid of ingredients that are out of favor, things like monosodium glutamate, or MSG, and disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, which enhance flavor, as well as things like vegetable oil and cornstarch. (Celery was eliminated because child taste-testers didn’t like the flavor, a spokeswoman said.) 
 
 By changing the proportion of yeast extract and other flavorings, Mr. Fellows said, he was able to offset the loss of the chemical flavor enhancers. 
 
 And working with Campbell’s chefs, he added and subtracted things like water and dehydrated chicken broth. “The culinary department owns the flavor, and we worked hard to uphold the reputation of chicken noodle soup,” said Bryan Cozzi, a test chef at Campbell. 
 
 But the process does not end when Mr. Fellows and Mr. Cozzi finish their work. They may be sent back to the drawing board if the new formulation adds cost to a product. “Often the biggest challenge is affordability,” said Jeff George, vice president for research and development. “In some cases, we can pass on the cost, but often, we can’t.” 
 
 Campbell may even tinker with shipping cases and labels to bring the cost in line. 
 
 Photo 
 
 This fall, Campbell began a new advertising campaign, “Made for Real, Real Life,” which aims to reintroduce consumers to the idea that soup can be a staple in the kitchen. The first spot in the series, which features a gay couple feeding their young son Campbell’s Star Wars chicken noodle soup, kicked up a controversy, but Campbell’s shrugged it off. 
 
 “No one has seen the whole campaign,” Mr. Vila said. “There are a variety of families in it, reflecting the mosaic of families we have in America today.” 
 
 The second ad in the series features a mother and father preparing an organic tomato soup for their son. “At least we know what he’s eating,” the young father says to his wife — oblivious to his son, licking a glue stick at the table. 
 
 In the kitchens here, food scientists and chefs are gingerly tinkering with Campbell’s classic tomato soup. 
 
 Mostly, that is about replacing high-fructose corn syrup with sugar. But that changes the taste and texture slightly — one test version was less sweet, more tangy and slightly less silky in the mouth. 
 
 “Will that make a difference to consumers who’ve eaten this soup for years and love it just the way it is?” Mr. George said. “That’s the question we ask ourselves over and over again.”
– Consumer Reports offers some age-old advice the next time you're cruising the grocery aisle: Don't pay for the brand name. It recently sampled 21 food products and found that generic brands beat or tied the brand-name version in taste on 14 of them. Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, for instance, lost to Food Lion's Lotsa Noodles, while America's Choice hot dogs outdid Oscar Mayer. Bonus: A family that spends $100 a week on groceries will save $1,500 a year by buying generic. More details here and at SlashFood.