Peanut butter does. Some brands are more bitter, while some are more sweet.
Milk is vile. You should be more upset about people buying it at all, rather than brand.
Milk. I know, but a splash goes well in a large cup of coffee. Brands I don’t watch as much, but I’ll check the expiration dates.
Next week? Nah.
Two weeks? Maybe.
Next August? Holy Hell.
Either that cow’s got magic nipples or the date-stamp guy is smoking weed again. Then again, if you were walking around a store all day in a bright red apron, maybe your eyes would be blazing red too.
“You want … whaaaat?” snort giggle
Whoah, this thread brought the Miss Purl McKnittington back? Outstanding!
And ketchup certainly tastes different, too. Significantly, in my opinion. I’m not particularly brand loyal when it comes to ketchup, but I prefer Hunt’s over Heinz, for instance.
I just buy the cheapest milk, myself. I don’t drink enough milk to really care about any differences between brands (if there are any, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are.)
So how does being in Wisconsin somehow give you “a bit of an idea of what you’re talking about”? Are there mandatory classes in the dairy business? Or do you somehow gain knowledge from exposure to dairy cows? Does this knowledge extend to those living in Wisconsin cities who have no daily exposure to dairy cows?
For the record, when I was a kid, my mother made certain foods from milk and strongly preferred certain brands (Hood, I think) because they worked better for her. And when I drank orange juice, I preferred Tropicana Pure Premium no-pulp juice over the Minute Maid brand stuff. I tasted a difference between them. I thought it was amazing that Tropicana could manage to make orange juice taste the same from week to week and month to month, given the number of farms they must use to source the oranges.
If you can’t tell a difference between Heinz ketchup and ketchup from What-A-Burger, then I don’t know what to tell you.
You realize with ketchup and peanut butter, tomatoes and peanuts are not the sole ingredients, right? Different companies might put different additives in their brands…
I swear Market Pantry milk from Target tastes different. Slightly less sweet.
I buy my milk based entirely on bottle shape and label color. I hate milk cartons, and need it to be in a 1 quart plastic bottle with a handle. I purchased it at the supermarket until they changed the label on the 1% from a pleasant light blue color to an ugly puke yellow. Since I didn’t like looking at the ugly puke yellow bottles in my refrigerator, I switched to another brand that still uses the pleasant light blue and that’s the brand I’ve bought ever since. It’s not so much brand loyalty as it is convenience and aesthetics.
Yeah, like I’m not particular about milk, but I’m particular about sour cream. Daisy Brand is about the only major brand that I will buy, as it’s the only one that is 100% cream (at least of the myriad brands at my local supermarket, whether American sour cream or Mexican/Latin American crema). Everything else has carrageanan and guar gum and a bunch of additives. And it tastes different, and has a slightly different texture. And while I don’t drink much milk myself (just use it as an ingredient), I could see others developing a taste for various milks. I’ve noticed they taste different around the country and certainly around the world. The cows’ diet makes a difference. If the milk is all being sourced from the same cows being fed the same feed, it shouldn’t be much different at all. But, who knows, maybe they have slightly different manufacturing or pasteurization techniques or something. It’s not crazy to think that some people do care and can tell these differences. I can’t. But if it’s just rebranded milk all from the same place then, yeah, it’s silly.
I sure hope you’re not dissing on Whataburger ketchup, because friend, thems fight’n words!
The cheapest Wisconsin milk works for me. But that out of state milk can taste funny sometimes…
He’s right about soy juice. Almond juice is also not milk.
Not at all. In fact, for Christmas this past year, I drove to a HEB to get some Whataburger ketchup bottles for my cousin b/c she loves the stuff!
Actually, Tropicana manages that by stripping the juice of oxygen, storing it in vats, then re-flavoring it with “flavor packs.” Not quite freshly squeezed. Still, I love their orange juice, and I definitely agree that it’s far superior to the Minute Maid stuff - all the from concentrate ones taste nasty.
As for milk, there’s thousands of reasons why a customer might buy the more expensive brand: they like the jug design more, they think it tastes better (even if it doesn’t, something being more expensive can make a person like it more), they prefer the label design, they just read an article about how the CEO of the other milk company exploits his employees, etc, etc, etc.
I have brand loyalty for milk because some brands last past their printed expiration dates. Others sometimes do, and sometimes don’t. And then there’s that brand that always goes sour before the printed date. It almost ruined my Thanksgiving once (thankfully I tasted it before I put it in the mashed potatoes)
I’m going to stick with the reliable one. I pay however many cents extra for the privilege of knowing how long my milk will last.
Seconded! Good to see one of her posts again!
My husband has a distinct preference for the Lactancia pur filtered milk or Natrel fine filtered milk due to taste and I agree to buy it at it’s inflated price because it stays fresh much longer than the other options. If I’m cooking with milk or otherwise planning to use a lot of milk fairly quickly I buy the cheaper options.
Actually, when I was in school, we did have mandatory agriculture classes, and dairying was one of the units we did. It was a little redundant since nearly everyone in the school lived on a dairy farm, but it was part of the curriculum anyway. I can’t speak for urban schools, though. I will say that in college, my friends from Chicago and the Twin Cities really had no idea what I was talking about when I talked about farming, but the ones from Milwaukee were better able to follow along. That might have to do with the friend I talked to most thinking I was super cute, though. I realize I don’t actually know if he understood what I was saying; he might have just been looking at me and agreeing with everything I said. 
Fourth grade is also the mandatory “history of Wisconsin” year in schools, and a unit on farming history of the state wouldn’t be unexpected there, which would include stuff about the dairy industry. I remember covering logging and potato farming in fourth grade, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the dairy industry got covered elsewhere. We also read The Land Remembers in high school and talked about the way farming changed through the 20th century there.
Moreover, the way the dairy industry works is just kind of common knowledge around here, and not just with people who work on farms. It employs a ton of people, so you could live in a city and still drive a milk truck or be a dairy inspector or work in a cheese plant or know someone who does really easily, and so be familiar with the industry that way. It really is just a huge part of the life in the state for a large part of the population, so the idea that you might have some understanding of the dairy industry in Wisconsin just by living here isn’t necessarily contemptible.
Perhaps some cows are free range cows and feed on grass… people are always willing to pay more for free range.
The Miss Purl McKnittington? I get an article?! I feel quite special now.
Thanks to you and Ostrya. I lurk here when I get bored, but I generally don’t feel moved to post unless someone is wrong about agriculture, apparently.