to be annoyed with DHs obsession with branded food

[Fibilou]

This month we have gone down to SMP from my normal wage, leaving us around £900 worse off. Therefore we have to seriously economise, the first casualty being the food budget.
DH refuses to buy own brand baked beans, cornflakes, tomato ketchup. We have spent about £5 more than necessary because of his blind obsession that "they taste different". Now, the only thing out of the above that I eat is the ketchup and I could not tell the difference between Tesco and Heinz, despite having worked in a fine wine merchant and therefore having a pretty good palate.

AIBU to expect that, when I have tried to keep the entire housekeeping shop this month under £100 (I am making my own cleaning products with lemon and vinegar etc, that is how much I am trying to economise) that DH could give up his infuriating obsession with brands and learn to love own-label ?

And furthermore,AIBU to buy a packet of tesco cornflakes and swap the inside into a Kellogs box then say "you've been eating the Tescos and you didn't notice" next month ? He didn't notice when I substituted Tesco salad cream for Heinz and we now buy own brand so I am wearing him down slowly.

£5 could feed us for 2 days on our current budget.

Well if you have a budget stick to it-get branded some weeks & other times it´s either or!

Or the branded stuff has to last a certain length of time & won´t be replaced until then.

I do agree that most non Kelloggs cornflakes are awful though!

Yanbu. But could you take the focus off the brands and put it on the healthy eating instead? By the sounds of it you are spending a lot of money on what is essentially junk food. And you've said you both need to lose weight. Maybe if you say to him that you are both going to diet you will actually lose weight and save money. Win win

Sorry but I agree with your DH some things do taste different, We only have Hinze beans, Kellogg cornflakes, Hinze sauce, and it has to be coke.

maybe you can give him a small portion of the budget to buy whatever branded thing he feels is important while doing the shopping. the rest he's not allowed to query.

also, instead of cereals maybe make a loaf of bread every two days or so if you can. freshly baked bread for toast is much nicer. bread's not too hard to make.
although the danger in that is if at some point you stop doing it due to lack of time he'll be straight back to kellog's and feel very justified.

i'm married to one of those men who don't care at all about the shopping as long as he's got dinner at night, and a packet of crisps when he feels like a snack.
it's swings and roundabouts though, if my housekeeping system goes awry and one night i'm at a loss as to what's for dinner he gets very crabby

Has to be Heinz baked beans, Ketchup and Kellogs Cornflakes. Supermarket branded cornflakes are yak in a bowl. Find me a brand name that tastes identical to kellogs and I will happily buy them but as yet I have not.

everything else own brand.

try (investing) in a load of tupperware type boxes and decanting what you can then he wont have a clue what brand. however, if he insists on shopping, can you split the list and maybe the cost eg, i am going to get the basics, and its my choice, you take your own trolley and your own wallet and get any luxuries. turn it into a competition for example, person who spends most has to cook/wash up or person who spends least gets a nice massage

I think you are being a bit unreasonable. If dh did the shopping and didn't buy anything I liked I would also make sure that I went with him. Maybe he could suggest another way he could economise?

Have you looked on the moneysavingexpert.com website? They have lots of info on where things are cheaper, plus one of their threads is where they show what 'own brands' are just repackaged 'real' brands :

forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=23002

And there are other sites out there that will compare prices for you in different supermarkets so you can see if any brands you really like are on offer to decide which supermarket to go to (great if you live somewhere with choice, not so good if you don't!)

i did a weeks shopping for 2 adult (inc pg me) and 2 children, came to £45!

send him to stay with us for a week, you eat what you are given or you go hungry

My DH is like this. In fact in our house when things are a bit tight the financial situation is described as OBK, which stands for Own Brand Ketchup.

This talk of changing packaging is childish. Talk to eachother. Compromise. decide together how your new budget is going to be spent.
Dh would never complain at what dinner he was given. but then he is more than cappable of shopping and cooking himself. and he often does.

Sounds like the story of my life with DH! Due to his try to keep up with the Jone's fussy mother, he was brought up with sirloin steak, heinz everything and none of the'cheap as chips' stuff ...God forbid! Until I'd had enough .. I finally put my foot down (or rather our budget did) and I've slowly converted him over to the supermarket stuff. Not neccessary everything, just the ingredients that can be substituted without compromising on the taste. It's like they say with babies .. persevere and after trying Value beans 10 times, he finally relented and now questions if they're different (I once had to get Heinz from the corner shop and he said they were too rich - RESULT!!) I grew up with both my mum & dad being avid bargain hunters and there was no taste sacrificed and we always eat well! Quite honestly, I begrudge paying for expensive things, when I know I can get something nice for my DD, House etc with the money I've saved being thrifty! Good Luck with your 'converting' and just bite your lip when he passes comments ..they'll gradually get less as he gets used to the new stuff!!!

It's not about whether they taste different, it's about whether you can afford them.

If he wants the branded stuff, he needs to come up with some other areas where savings could be made instead.

I suspect if something else he enjoys was going to get sacrificed, he'd get happy with own brands pretty quickly.

"If dh did the shopping and didn't buy anything I liked I would also make sure that I went with him."

I don't buy premade food - which includes biscuits, cakes, crisps etc. So no, my trolley doesn't include anything I like either - it has to be made at home. There is never anything on my shopping list that doesn't require making into something else, apart from cheese, beans, yoghurt, salad and that sort of thing

I don't understand why it's the OP's shopping trip, her budget, and he's being unreasonable and controlling to want to shop with her? It's family money, family food and a family budget on which to afford family meals. Why is it the dominion of the OP? Gosh, no-one's calling her controlling for "not letting" him shop alone.

I sympathise entirely about the actual budgetary constraints. There's a definite problem about the junk food (not the branded stuff, though, he's right about that) and it needs to be addressed. But all this outrage that the OP's husband likes food shopping and is involved in what's bought - that's a bit weird, frankly. He's not a child to be 'given what he's given and like it', he's a wage earning adult who wants a say in the food shopping.

"Why is it the dominion of the OP?"

Because I deal with the household budget, the food and do all the cooking and cleaning. I have a set amount of money given to me every month - which has to last. If DH decides to buy Kellogs cereal with it I can't afford, for example, flour to make bread and cakes, which we'd much rather eat. It's not as if I'm suggesting that he eats value ones, just the own brand equivalent.

Some branded things like (certain cleaning products, plain flour, salt, jars of herbs, bottles of oil,milk, butter, cheese,) can be pretty generic and the quality difference is negligable, but I am in absolute agreement with your DH that there are some foods which own brands (and particularly basic range own brands) are a very very poor substitute for the well-known varieties. Not only do they not taste as good, they have a lower percentage of 'proper' ingredients, padded out by extra thickerners, sugar, additives, colours etc. Compare the sickly, luminous, gloopy slime that is own brand 'basics' jam, to lovely Bonne Maman and see what I mean.

no superfluous 'r' in thickerners sorry.

The only thing I don't buy own-brand is cornflakes. Everything else is just daft. MIL used to swear that brands were better - she used to tell a story of when her father worked in the docks. Heinz used to get the pick of the beans when they arrived so they could get the best for their baked beans, then C&B and then the rest. But FFS once you've cooked bean and covered it in sugary over-flavoured tomato sauce who give a f* what they were like in the first place

Fresh food I buy the best, packaged food I go with my own experience.

actually the only thing that i bought branded this week was cravendale milk.. and thats cos its 8 pints for £3

Aha, that makes sense, fibilou. I'm not actually saying, at all, that you're unreasonable to want to budget and to prevent the waste that goes on. I'm just curious that the responses were all óh my god he can't even let her do the shopping alone' when, frankly, food shopping is one of the chores that makes sense to do together since both people have to eat the food.

We always food shop together. We enjoy food shopping. I would be very upset if he went on his own and forgot my favourites, and vice versa. That said, I do not "give" my husband a set amount of money and expect him to do all the cooking and cleaning and budgeting and childcare within those constraints.

tortoise, you obviously missed that htread recently when there was horror at a family going to the supermarket, on a saturday. why didn't one parent stay at home or go to the park with the children, whilst the other shopped? oh how i laffed and laffed.
i like shopping with dh. we don't do it that often. but when we do, i really like it. we want the same ingrediants. its me who struggles, when i'm on my own. normally i make a list, we need bread, both milks, cheese, brie etc etc. then i get there and think, right i need 3 meals. and i don't fancy anything. and then i end up buying the same old things, chicken for roast chicken, quiche and salad, packet of beef for spag bol. BORING.

my dh never forgets my favourite items. EVER. and i don't forget his. and we always bring home a few extra treats for eachother. i say, oh they had some peppered beef slices on the deli counter on offer. and i got you a pork pie. oh lovely he says. he says, oh they had some camenbert reduced. oh fab i say. thank you.

life of riley we live, i tell you. so exhilarating, its untrue. don't you all do this , then ?

Oblomov can you please link to that thread? sounds fun but I missed it.

OP, YANBU - he might be right about the branded stuff but it doesn't matter, your budget is way more important than his taste buds! I'd say, if he doesn't like the own brand ketchup, then oh dear he'll have to go without ketchup won't he!

We've had to economise and have recently got a lot better at it. 2 things we do are:

dividing big packs of meat up after shopping and freezing them separately (otherwise we'd end up doing the whole lot and either eating too much or throwing some away! )

'beefing' up mince/stews with tinned pulses - healthier too. we were reluctant at first but it's a habit now!

crowdedsupermarketshopping

there you go