What grocery items are always worth the extra $1-$5?
Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
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Butter, life is too damn short to cook with and eat shitty butter.
Also anything that goes between me and the ground, my bed, my shoes, and my tires.
Hello, fellow Costco shopper.
Costco has sub par service at their tire center, but good prices. Recommend using their prices to price match at a regular store with better service to get the best of both worlds.
Maybe your warehouse has issues but Costco tire center is top tier
Edit: also forgot to mention their tires come with warranties, free rotations, tps sensors are super cheap compares to the dealership, and they often have other incentives on top of all that.
it’s just a bit slow. i’ve waited 20 minutes just to buy a battery before
have you done this? what did you think?
Kerrygold
Not grocery but my opinion is anything that interacts with the world around you. Glasses, shoes, gloves, headphones should all be top quality for comfort and their respective task
I agree with every part of this.
A while back I was standing in the butter section, waiting for a couple to move so I could grab my pricey-but-worth-it butter, and overheard them talking about how butter is a scam and it all tastes the same no matter what. I had to hold back a chuckle. They of course grabbed the cheapest option and went about their lives in complete ignorance of the glory of high quality butter.
I still wonder if I should have said something to encourage them to try a better butter, but they talked about it with such blind confidence that I didn’t feel right about it at the time.
Ever double blinded yourself with Kerrygold (or w/e) vs. regular stuff? Always try to do this and surprise myself with some products
I can say from personal experience this applies to vegan butter too. Get Miyoko's, or Violife if you absolutely have to, but for all that's good don't get shitty butter.
Canadian maple syrup.
While I agree, the price difference between "maple syrup" (maple flavoured corn syrup) and maple syrup is way more than $5. A bottle of genuine maple syrup is $20+.
It's not called maple syrup if it's not real maple syrup. They'll call it maple flavored syrup, pancake syrup, but never maple syrup.
You can get real maple syrup in the states for around $15 (and that's honestly NYC pricing). It's not corn syrup, but it's also not Canadian maple syrup.
But one of my favorite things about Canada absolutely is the abundance of maple syrup here. Maple syrup candies are my favs.
WF sells real canadian syrup too.
Costco sells real Canadian maple syrup at a fair price (cost plus a few percent).
Even as a Canadian, I honestly prefer the cheap butter flavored syrup. I grew up on that stuff and I fucking love it so much. Real maple syrup is still delicious but I'll always choose some good old butter flavored syrup.
There's nothing wrong with new england maple syrup, but yes, real maple syrup not "pancake syrup" with maple flavoring.
That's me, I don't really care where the maple syrup came from as long as it's real
It's all run by a cartel!
Second this. I even put it in coffee instead of just sugar. It's so good!
I always make cold brew so I can't say how it is with "regular" hot coffee lol
I'm going to sound like a hater, but the food in season and local is what you should be eating, and that will always be the cheapest. If you're talking processed food brands and shit in boxes in the middle of the store, I'd argue none of it is worth the extra money, its all bad for you, stop. That said, the frozen arby's curley fries are bomb, and no one does cheesey things like cheetos or smartfood.
I've seen a few people saying that it's cheaper to buy stuff that's in season over the years but I've never seen prices drop on in season stuff before. Idk if it's just a thing where I am but the supermarkets seem to just pocket the difference and leave the prices the same year round.
bummer...i see berry and asparagus prices down now...
Also melons, super on sale.
That means you forgot the 'local' part. Cheapest supermarket get their stuff from the cheapest sources worldwide (= lowest quality as well, worldwide)
You really have to look if you want to buy local, but then it's worth it.
You'll still probably get better flavors when things are in season locally. Also, you'll need to check, but often the frozen version of produce is cheaper when the fresh version is in season, and frozen is easy to stock up on.
This is less applicable to supermarkets a d more applicable to local green grocers.
Have to disagree on the last point. I greatly prefer Aldi Cheese Curls and Market Basket Cheese Crunches. Except the jalapeño cheddar flavor. Those slap.
Trader Joes are so much better than the Aldi ones IMO
But the parent company owns both of those brands though?
Aldi is two different companies, North and South. One owns Aldi America, the other bought Trader Jones.
This sounds like the beginning of a math story problem.
Yep! Very different product though. So much less greasy feeling, better crunch, less cheetoh fingers. i think the trader joes version is about $2 for a bag?
That’s a worthy debate. They are also good, and each in their own way, and I am very happy to enjoy both.
Have you had the smartfood popcorn with Cheeto flavoring?
My god...never heard of this... https://www.smartfood.com/products/smartfood-cheetos-cheddar-flavored-popcorn
Farmer’s market tomatoes. I went through my whole life thinking I hated tomatoes. Turns out, I hate grainy tomatoes that taste like nothing, and real tomatoes grown nearby and picked ripe are wonderful.
Tomatoes are also quite easy to grow in the summer and are very prolific.
Also in season are strawberries. The ones I've got are small and don't look good, but the taste is superb.
Both can be grown potted, and the strawberries are quite hardy.
They're insane. We didn't weatherize our beds for winter but the strawbees didn't care. They took over nearly the entirety of both beds. They also try to escape the beds occasionally.
Yeah, even just growing them are better. I thought I hated Cherry Tomatoes, but then I had some off my own plant and they taste so good.
Oh, home grown fruits will always taste better because you can let them ripen on the plant, allowing for full flavor development. There are cultivar variations too.
Seasonings are another crop that you can pot and even have on a windowsill in a tiny apartment. Parsley, basil, and oregano grow well in the same pot. Scallions / chives and Rosemary also pot well together.
Home grown cherry tomatoes were my favorite summer snack as a kid. Pop pop pop they go! Amazing!
I grew up eating garden tomatoes. Went to college, for the first time bought a grocery store tomato. Cut into it, tasted it... turned to my friend, what the fuck is this shit?
Absolutely. I was the same way then my mom make a margherita pizza mostly from scratch with tomatoes she grew herself and it was life changing
Yeah, this, but all the things, especially veggies.
The same plant can basically feel like an entirely different species.
Most of the time it just grew up properly (not maximising growth rate to lower the costs).
Hank buying food from a co-op instead of megalo mart https://youtu.be/OBLqzGrq8T0
Coffee. It's something that I refuse to compromise on. It may be especially important to me because I like to drink it black. If it doesn't taste great without adding anything to it, it's not with drinking at all in my opinion.
I'm two ways about this.
In recent years I've become quite a coffee lover. I've experimented with a lot of brewing methods, and got into small batch beans from independent roasters, with interesting qualities like being aged in whisky barrels (that one tastes and smells sooo good)
At the same time though I grew up in a family where the only coffee my parents ever drank was instant - a teaspoon of granules with some hot water and milk and maybe sugar. When I go over there to visit that's what I'll get, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at it. In some ways it's got that taste of nostalgia lol.
I didn't drink coffee for half my life because I was usually always around burnt, bottom tier coffee.
After moving largely away from whiskies and runs due to medicine I was on, I wanted a complex beverage to fill that void and gave some decent coffee a shot. It was of course worlds beyond most of what I've had anywhere else, and now I try different single origins every month.
But the real wild thing, is now I apply that tasting ability I've developed to diner coffee, and now the particular funk of a Waffle House cup gives me the memories of old road trips. The coffee from the local diner reminds me I'm home. Now that I can pick out one cup of low grade from another, it lets me appreciate the times I do go low on coffee.
Your comment made me think of the semi-famous Tom Petty coffee story from Rolling Stone. In searching for the article, I saw something claiming his daughters refuted the claims of his brand of choice, though still others claimed Mr Petty had personally verified it with them, so who's to say for sure at this point. But anyone who likes coffee, Tom Petty, or some food storytelling should like this tale of a man and his quest for the perfect cup. For anyone that hasn't read the story, I really enjoy it and think it's a fun read and a reminder of simple joys in life.
The coffee story is quite a long way in, but it was an interesting read, thanks.
I guess the message is, things aren't always good because they are objectively good. Sometimes things are good because of when we had them, and who we enjoyed them with. And that's definitely true.
It does meander a bit, as it's more a reflection of the author's history with Petty on the one year anniversary of his passing that just happens to eventually settle on a tale about coffee perfection.
I like it overall as a tale about simple pleasures and what will people remember most about us after we're gone rather than a guide on how to achieve the perfect cup. I have reservations about if I'd agree that was the best cup ever if I had been there with them, but that was what reminded me of the story while I was reading about you having a mug of instant coffee with your family. 😊
As a fellow up the arse coffee lover - I moved away from drinking fancy coffee every day. Not just because 250 grams are, at best, at 16€ and I drink about 35 grams a day on an average day, but also because it takes away the "specialty" if you drink it daily, regularly, ordinarily. I now have a go to coffee (pre ground even) that I enjoy drinking as my "normal" coffee and treat myself to a cup of specialty every now and then, and a bag now lasts me a month. I enjoy it much more and I save a lot of money - although my go to coffee is also not the cheapest crap.
I also started out with instant coffee btw - took some with me with milk and sugar to school in a small water bottle when I was a young teenager (and girlmore girls was on so I had to get into coffee). Just reading your comment gave me a flashback to being 14 and my mom giving me the "good instant coffee". Memories and vibes.
They said $1-5 not $10-20, half decent coffee is "fuck you" expensive.
Coffee seems to be one of those things supermarkets regularly price cycle.
If i buy 4x 1kg bags when it's 30% off, i rarely have to buy any at full price.
This doesn't work for artisan's coffee you buy direct from the roaster obviously.
Olive oil, although it's not really 1-5 extra where I am. There's a lot of advice to buy cheap oil for cooking, but that's not really true. The truth is that a lot of 'extra virgin' oil is sold in an old, rancid state, and you have to upgrade into the mid tiers to get away from that.
Buy the best olive oil you're willing to spend money on, even for cooking.
i was hoping someone would say this as well! heaps of evidence out there about tonnes of adulterated olive oils. usually with cheap hyper-processed seed oils
I like buying local California olive oils, then I know it's real.
Yep. Read “Extra Virginity” and you’ll likely never buy imported EVO again.
I feel like that title calls for a joke but I'm too tired
Good ev olive oil is something else. Once you try you can never go back to.
I lived most my life using and tasting the highest quality cause my dad works in the agricolutural field, writing contracts for farmers and etc. and, while not so good paid, the job comes with the upside of the presents from said farmers. Liters and liters of the highest quality oil italy can produce. I think we never (since he had this job) boight a can of oil, and its a pretty big save too considering that kind of oil easily goes for 20€/L.
When i was out for university, my tight budget meant i had to resort to just "Olive oil". Not EV. Not 100% local. I though "how bad can it be, its still pressed olives!" Bad, very bad.
Yes, very much this (and the big price differences, and how cheap oils are also sold as expressive ones). Smol producers of extra virgin (= cold pressed with low yields) olive oils usually offer good price/performance, at least until they become a brand & sell out.
Other oils also have a ton of specifics ("oil" is a very broad term), like how fast flax oil degrades in quality & the 'use by' date are useless.
(Tho it's still important to understand how heat affects divergent & differently prepared oils - and especially for what you absolutely do need refined oil, regardless of plant.)
Eggs. I bought the expensive ones once just for laughs and they taste great without the weird funk. Now I have my own chickens, and the eggs are better than anything in the store. It’s probably more expensive though!
Carrots and celery I always buy organic because they seem to take on the flavor of whatever they were watered with. It makes a difference there for me.
And tortillas, I get the local boutique ones instead of the national mass market ones. Big difference there.
+1 to eggs! I dream of having chickens but have heard it's a game of pros and cons
We just got chickens, im not sure they're cheaper then buying but certainly more available.
I do have a constant fight with hawks though trying to eat them
Hawks, snakes stealing eggs, and then a fox finally did mine in :(
We live somewhere with a ton of hawks and coyotes. Our coop was our quarantine project so we kind of overdid it. It’s 8-by-16-feet, surrounded on the sides and bottom with heavy gauge hardware cloth and a metal roof. Nothing can get into it.
The run, on the other hand, is about 30 feet along one side, chicken wire and covered with bird netting. We lost two of our girls when someone made a mistake and locked them outside in the run. A fox dug under and took them. I added a skirt along the ground to stop anything digging in but it’s not as good as the coop itself
That’s exactly what happened to us. The coop was a fortress, but a fox dug into the run and it was a crime scene. Chickens need a big run but damn it’s tough to keep them safe. :(
I used to have chickens. Between the cost of the coop, the feed, medicine, etc. I’d say each egg cost us about $5. 🙂
A little exaggeration, but not much. The eggs were really good though, and they make for cute stupid pets.
The difference in eggs is a placebo at best.
I can tuck homemade tortillas though, definitely worth it.
That probably depends on how you're cooking them. Runny yolk from good eggs is an order of magnitude better than the cheap eggs.
No. The only difference is freshness and how it retains its shape. It's entirely a placebo if you can taste a difference.
Kenji did an experiment https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs and I've done similar with my friends that all loathed actually taking care of chickens.
Pasta. It takes pasta dishes from "eh, it's food" to "this is really good".
Ever since I tried bronze pasta I cannot look at regular pasta the same way. I cannot buy that yellow stuff anymore.
Whole Foods, oddly enough, is the place I find the cheapest good pasta. Their store brand is less than most places and really good.
it is, even thier pasta sauce cheap, and at least your getting organic as well. thier more bougie ones are usually what people buy, Raos. i also have discounts for wf. i buy the egg wraps they sell now, but there are other places that sells it for somewhat cheaper, but its out of the way and inconvient to get to those other stores.
Paper Towels and Trash Bags - the cheap ones just don't hold up as well
Yeah, if we end up with cheap trash bags by mistake I find the rim always rips apart when I go to take out the trash and I end up using a second trash bag anyway.
i noticed alot of instore brands, and some brands being sold on amazon are super thin so went to a local grocery outlet to get the normal quality ones.
Toilet paper too! As someone who needs to use it for peeing, it likes to stick if you get the cheap stuff. Not fun!
trash bags, was very difficult to find, that isnt thin, they shrinkflation/cheapflation most of thier brands. Target had excellent trashbags, before they switched to dealworthy, which is more expensive if you notice the bags are now superthin and they sell the "up and up" ones at a markup. i went to Grocery outlet and got the same quality as the old trash bags with none of the bs of the shrinkflaiton on it.
Canned tomatoes. Get the good ones if you can!
My husband and I got curious about the variance in canned tomatoes one day, so we got one can from every brand we could find. We had a blind tasting session where we tried each one without knowing what brand it was (palate cleansers in between) and ranked them all out of 10 with some comments. We didn't share our rankings or thoughts with each other until the Big Reveal at the end when we found out which tomatoes were which.
Turned out we actually preferred some of the cheaper brands, and the most expensive ones got worse ratings. There wasn't a direct relationship between price and preference, but it was interesting.
It was a fun day. We also did the same thing with soda water.
If I can find it, I will edit it in.
There was a great America's Test Kitchen episode where they did just this, and they talked about the oils that surface in the different cans, etc
edit: I could not locate the specific episode I was referring to. I could find other similar ones, but not the comprehensive breakdown I mentioned. ATK has changed a lot in the last several years, not surprised but a little disappointed.
Love this!!!
Try with coffee and butter n stuff?
I think butter would be a very interesting one! Especially for the spreadable kind.
The only other item I've done this with was beer. We had about 10 of our college friends all bring one or two kinds of beer each in a paper bag, smuggling in to the designated "staging" room. I wasn't super into beer so I just did the facilitating on this one - I randomized the order and handed out samples of the beer in small cups to everyone, and everyone gave a ranking and some thoughts, as well as trying to guess what the beer was. At the end, I entered everything into excel and had a little presentation of the results. It was a fun night.
The most memorable part was when our friend who LOVES this one particular (somewhat pricey) craft beer gave it like a 3/10. He spent the entire night ranking everything quite low and waiting for his fav to come up, expecting to immediately recognize it and give it an 11 - to the point where he accused me of missing his contribution completely - just to discover it was beer #4 and he had already made disparaging comments about it.
lol :D
Thank you great story
Mozzarella (talking about the balls of fresh mozzarella you get sealed in with their brine).
Can't do store brand anymore after having tried Galbani.
It's pretty easy to make those with some high fat milk, rennet, and cheese salt
I mean, yea. But it is also easy to buy them, they're everywhere and fairly cheap. The Galbani one is also just 1€ or so more expensive.
To be clear, making your own is fantastic, it's just not anything I'd want to do 2x/week
How long does it keep once you make it?
I've never managed to keep it for more than day. Presumably it's pretty shelf stable in its brine for a while
Local
Whatever the product is, I'll pay an extra dollar for domestic (and especially within the province)
Fresh corn tortillas.
Tequila.
Haircare stuff
Husband bought "the good eggs" once and has not looked back since. I used to keep chickens and the bougie store eggs are much closer to those than they are to the factory farmed thin shelled light yolked ones.
The best eggs are eggs from a farm that are unwashed and you keep on the counter. They taste a zillion times better and last for a long time. I get 3 dozen for 15 dollars at the local farm. It's honestly better than the store.
I got a tortilla press and masa harina. I will not buy premade corn torillas again. Masa isn't that expensive, add salt, water, mix, press, and cook on a dry pan (or super lightly oiled, i put a very light layer on mine since it's cast iron)
So much tastier than store bought and better texture.
It's the curse of discovering good food, once you make it from scratch, you never want to eat the store trash again lol
Lunch meat. I eat sandwiches every day for lunch and I have tried all the discount store brands for various types of ham, turkey, and chicken, and it's all pretty shit, so I'm quite happy to pay the buck for the Hillshire Farms stuff cause it's the best.
If you really want to step up your game, try buying raw meat, cooking it, and slicing it for sandwiches. I do this with chicken and it's served me really well at very low cost.
That sounds like a big increase in pain-in-the-ass for not that big an increase in savings. I'm happy to trade money for convenience on this one. ;)
There is also a potential health difference. Lunch meat tends to be loaded with preservatives and falls into the category of "processed meat".
It is. What makes it worth it for me is the combination of extremely high quality and very low price. If I could buy deli meat of that quality, I probably would, but I haven't encountered it.
Real parm instead of the canned stuff.
Chicken breasts - you can get massive pumped up chicken breast for the same price as "normal" chicken breasts. The problem is when you cook the big ones, they just leech out all their liquid.
150% on real parm.
I’d also argue for getting whole chickens (and spring for the nicer ones too). Roast it, pull off the breasts and eat those, eat the drumsticks if you enjoy them, or use the entire rest of the carcass for making really good stock.
Plus they're so inflated it's hard to cook them properly
The huge ones are just gross.
I think "woody" is the technical term.
Good ketchup Real butter, not reconstituted which should be illegal Good bread, fresh or at least not the cheapest stuff
Real butter for things where you can taste it. Store brand for things where the other flavors are more overpowering and don't really notice the butter.
Having two butters to manage seems like a lot of work.
Believe it or not, top-shelf bacon. It's got more bacon in it. Less water. You're not paying nearly as much more per ounce of actual meat as it looks at first.
Lots of "organic" produce has a significantly longer shelf life than the basic stuff too. Never mind whether it's any healthier or tastier, I'm not saving any money if I pay a dollar less and it starts molding before I can eat half of it.
Yeah, the secret to getting good bacon is buying it at the
butcherdeli counter. You can request your preferred thickness, it's much leaner, and it's more flavorful. Unless you've got a local artisan cured meat hookup available, it's the way to go.For purely economic reasons, the less often I need to buy it, the more I allow myself to splurge.
So vegetables and my go to drink I consume everyday are bought the absolute cheapest, but that spice blend for those veggies lasts me months so I really don't care if there's a cheaper alternative.
Of course, expensiveness is measured per kg/litre, paying a bit more up front is always worth it if it means a lower price per kg (if you can consume it before it goes bad).
If I'm going to skin or peel the vegetable, I go with the cheap stuff. If I'm eating the skin then I go organic. I never buy the prewashed lettuce and salads when they are on sale because those have already started to go bad usually. And when it comes to things like berries, strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers I go with whatever looks like it will taste the best. Cheap blueberries for instance, absolutely do not hold up against the good stuff; life is too short for tart blueberries.
Spices are a great investment! Small independent Asian stores often have amazing ones which last way longer that supermarket ones. I don't have any shops like that near me so I buy on amazon and have found great ones there
Cream cheese. The store brand might be okay for maybe baking with, but you can't spread that excuse for caulk on a bagel and say it's anything near as good as the Philadelphia brand.
Philly used to be reliable for not having gums added. Sadly they started using them, too, a year or two ago. Now I buy a local brand with nothing more than milk, cream, and salt for twice the price.
Seriously?! I need to go check some ingredients, brb.
Gotta check ingredients every so often. They love changing things without telling you.
False. The store brands don't blend well, and you end up with little balls of raw cream cheese in your cheesecake.
Kirkland's is the only store brand I've tried that's OK, but Costco store brand stuff is all miles ahead of the other stores.
Kerrygold
Silverware
The cheap metals taste like a magnet, have rough edges, and lose their appearance after a few washes
There’s plenty of good used stainless flatware out there. Older stuff found at estate sales is frequently better quality and cheaper than buying new at department stores.
Huy Fong Sriracha. Just don't even bother buying any other bottle of "sriracha" sauce. It's not worth it. Your disappointment will be immeasurable and your day will be ruined.
That used to be the case because the peppers were specifically grown just for Huy Fong. However, Huy Fong screwed over their exclusive pepper grower to increase profits. The peppers they get now don't taste the same.
This is it. The old Huy Fong is completely gone now, unless you have a connection to someone who's been hoarding.
There's a different sauce brand now that is produced by Huy Fong's old pepper farm using the same peppers. But I've been told that's not exactly the same either.
While I also like Huy Fong Sriracha and was delighted when I first ran into it, I believe I remember reading about them changing the recipe at some point.
EDIT: Oh, sounds like they didn't change the recipe intentionally, but at least the first batch they had after they had a fight with their pepper supplier tasted somewhat differently. I assume that they're aiming to keep the flavor the same.
I've had a Sriracha from Yellow Bird that was absolutely amazing, they added in a little bit of agave, probably my top pick now.
All of them really. Once I find a brand I like, I'll stick with it. I'm usually not paying attention to prices anyway. I'll even go to another country just so I can get the proper brand of tomato paste. (It's not that bad, just around 15km away).
Just had some of the worst “store brand” honey mustard. How do you mess that up? Tasted like they watered it down by adding extra vinegar. Watery. Gross tasting. Lesson Learned.
Came here to say Dijon mustard. A jar of mustard lasts me 6 months, so a couple extra bucks for the good stuff doesn't amount to much.
Nice try, Kroger.
I will add that I’ve yet to find a decent tasting store brand soda or sparkling water. I have no idea why it’s so difficult for them to get the flavoring right.
Kroger diet cola. It's better than diet coke. Always fucking out of stock though around me.
But…it’s Kroger.
Lube.
4-ply toilet paper.
If the IBD folks don't unite under this answer they are probably living with bidets.
No, just perpetually constipated.
La Tourangelle Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It’s my favorite.
Pasta made in Italy. (A recent ex-girlfriend converted me)
If you absolutely positively have to have a bottle of soda, then probably go with the Mexican Coke over anything made in America.
Theres a lot of craft soda or smaller soda worth your time. Also Fever Tree is fantastic for mixers/fizzy drinks
Forgot about this. Empire soda from Bristol, RI is the bomb.
Fever Tree is the best. Makes a Gin and Tonic so much better.
Chocolate, coconut milk, tea, coffee, mustard.
shout out Ayam milk
Honestly a lot of stuff I like to get the nice version. Most packaged products you can get away with cheaper, but paper products you wanna splurge on, and produce you wanna get from a local store with good stuff rather than your local megamart when possible. A farmer's market or even just a neighborhood grocery store is usually gonna have fresher, tastier veggies in my experience. A little more expensive, but worth it.
The paper thing stopped being true in the past year around here. Name brand paper towels are now so thin, store brand is thicker at half the price. Q-Tips don't have the same cardboard in the middle, less cotton Kroger brand is closer to the old q-tips (but still a step down from what I grew up with).
Toilet paper is basically a toss-up, the nicer store brands are about comparable to the non-specialty name brands now. For the extra strong or extra soft, name brand still wins, but it's changing.
Instant noodles. I live in South Korea and there are gazillion options, from little more than a quarter(USD for your convenience) to almost $1.5 a pack.
Huge difference. I eat 2 packs per meal almost always and yes, it's often 2x more expensive but I'd just not eat cheapest ones.
what are your favorites? would love to see if i can find them locally.
some people at WF, will only go after certain honeys, even if they are more expensive. i will still buy different flavor sparkling waters, from different brands. but the key is to know which ones are shrinkflationed, some will only sell 8packs, while others will sell 12cans per box. stevia, i specifically only look for the ones that dont have sugar in it, more often than not most brands of stevia has sugar in it, in the form dextrose/maltodextrin. its pricier but worth it for a brand that has pure stevia powder, also one thats not mixed with ethyrthiol.
certain organic veggies are better , if you dont want to know which used the most chemicals, like org celeries.
From my shopping, there is just about none. Arguably sausages but then there are cheaper alternatives I go for instead usually. Pork shoulder is cheaper per kg than all but the lowest meat content sausages.
Typically been spending £10-15 each per week on shopping at Aldi. But it also depends on how far you go. You could say everything is paying extra if you are spending more than £2 as that could get enough rice for the week. Got several herbs growing in the garden too so it wouldn't even be completely plain.
Ben & Jerry's ice cream. As someone who's lactose intolerant, their non-dairy stuff is amazing and so worth the extra money.