Real peanut butter is just peanuts with a tiny (less than 1%) amount of salt.
I don’t have brand loyalty for milk. But I do consider freshness. I might pass on a cheaper milk if it had a closer expiration date.
This exactly.
Back when I used to buy more milk, I found that the store brand went bad around the expiration date and the Tuscan (local brand) would go very bad within a couple days of opening. Even if the Tuscan was on sale, it was no bargain.
My son is really picky about milk brands - I don’t get it at all, but he’ll drink some milk and not other milk - and he’s been that way since he was little. And its blind - or at least it was until recently (he’s almost sixteen already) - I’d pour the milk and put the carton in the fridge and he’d say “Mom, you bought the weird milk again, I don’t like it.”
He especially hates the local small farm/dairy organic grass fed, we give our cows names and treat them like family milk (Cedar Summit Farm for anyone in the Twin Cities). I love their milk, and will go out of my way for their cream. But its better for my budget that the cheaper it is, the better my son seems to like it. But he can tell the difference if I buy the Kirkland brand at Costco or get Market Pantry at Target.
It’s probably worthy of its own thread (and I am sure without looking that its been done), but this reminds me of my mental list of “generic grocery store items I will tolerate/actually like versus only buying name brand”.
Milk never makes that list for me. I live in Kroger country in the confluence of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and their milk is just fine to me, although my growing sons, whom also happen to be baby cows, consume the lions share of it all and I just have the occasional glass with a cookie or something.
Other items from that mental list that I cannot condone generic do in fact include peanut butter (Jif only for us) and ketchup (Heinz), also jelly (Smuckers blackberry jam), paper towels, toilet paper, sugared cereals, most cookies, etc.
Weirdly, my ex-wife will not buy “green milk”. “Green milk”, you say? " I wouldn’t buy that shit either!".
It’s how Kroger color coordinates it’s differing milk fat contents. Their 1% milk has a green cap and a label with some green writing on it. She’s totally serious.
Also a redneck.
I don’t actually drink the stuff, but my husband and daughter have a very definite preference for milk from one of two local dairies. They don’t like the flavor of the grocery store/national brands. I buy milk from one of the two dairies because the other milk has a history of going bad before its expiration date. I don’t know if that has something to do with how the dairy handles and transports the milk or the refrigeration in the stores that carry it, but I stick with the one specific brand, regardless of price.
We go through maybe one gallon of milk a week nowadays, though, as opposed to the 2-3 gallons we used to need when we had two teenagers (and their friends) in the house, so it’s not really much of a hardship to pay a little extra for the kind they like.
Sometimes it is.
We noticed a new brand of milk appear a couple of years ago. It was about 50c cheaper for 4 litres. We looked into it, and even made some calls. Turns out it is produced in the exact same local dairy as our previous brand, from the exact same milk from the identical cows, using the same process and the exact machinery.
We were told the only difference is the label on the outside, and the marketing. Told this by the company that sells both brands. In the same store.
I can’t say I’ve really noticed a difference in taste between milk brands, but how can you *possibly *say that all peanut butter tastes the same? 
Sadly, I am Moo Cow Fuck Milk Intolerant so I have to buy the expensive Lactaid brand which actually seems to last longer than regular Moo Cow Fuck Milk.
I was unaware that sometimes the brands are just marketing, and it really is the same milk. And maybe it’s just me and a few other people, but I absolutely can taste a difference between different milk brands. Some taste sweet. Some taste almost like nothing but water.
I drink a lot of milk on its own though. It’s one of the only things I drink other than ice tea and water (and sometimes juice and an occasional soda but those are rare). For those who rarely drink it or use it only in their cooking, I can understand the “milk is milk” argument.
For me, “butter is butter” because I only ever use it to cook with, and never as a spread for vegetables or bread. But those who love buttered bread probably can tell the difference between butter brands and have their favorites. I couldn’t.
And I too am lactose intolerant (very slightly), so I tend to drink Lactaid when it’s available. It lasts a lot longer and tastes a lot sweeter than regular milk.
Dean’s doesn’t use the phrase “cow’s fuck milk” nor “cow teat” in their marketing, hence the difference in price.
I am not a milk drinker, not for twenty years or more, just the fake stuff on muesli now and then (but not almond, I hear it tastes like elf come). But my best friend, who lives in Wisconsin does drink milk.
So, when we travel together, I often end up buying her a carton now and then. But she started to find it acting as a diuretic, which sucks when you are traveling. One time, I bought her a carton of Horizon, and there seemed to be no diuretic effect, so that is what I get her now (and she says it has consistently good flavor).
ISTR having heard or read somewhere that the farms that supply large dairy operations has been doping their herd with furosemide – a prescription diuretic) to keep their tits flowing well, but that seems to be something I heard wrong. However, the anti-placebo effect still works, the Horizon does not make her pee like other brands do.
Just to be clear, there is no expiration date printed on a milk carton, only a sell-by date. All milk is good past that date, usually by a week or more.
You sure about that? The milk in my fridge says “BEST BY,” not “SELL BY.”
I guess it’s different where you are. Every container I’ve ever seen says “sell-by”, and a quick google search confirms that’s common practice, including the FDA website.
I will agree that on a lot of brands, the name on the box/jar/can/jug/bottle is meaningless and just a way to cash in, but that’s not always the case. Sure, I’m not in Wisconsin, but I can definitely taste a difference between different brands. Fortunately, I prefer the milk of my local store brand over the big name brand, probably largely because the big name brands come from places like Wisconsin and the store brand gets local milk, so it’s likely fresher.
Either way, even if you don’t detect a difference, I don’t see why it should be baffling that someone else might, even if it is imagined, or might have other motivations behinds buying certain brands. For instance, I know plenty of people who are fairly extreme on both sides of the isle who won’t buy brands that they believe are associated with the opposite political party, or will specifically buy a brand because it is associated with their party. And I know others who will be on one side or the other due to various practices, charitable donations, or whatever.
Regardless, we all have things we spend money on that many other people probably don’t think is worth it, or don’t spend money on things that many other people do think is worth it. It’s just part of human nature and marketing and all exploits that. So… meh.
Brand loyalty for milk is huge in the hippie dippie town where I live, because folks are painfully aware of any differences between brands and dairies. Local vs regional, organic vs non, hormones vs none, humane vs not so much, cow vs goat (hippies LOVE their goat milk), dairies that leave the cream in vs those that don’t, level of pasteurization, and so on.
So, is all of the milk from all of the cows in Wisconsin somehow mixed together and then sold by different marketing companies?
Because if it isn’t and each company had their own exclusive list of dairies and production facilities then possibly saying “it’s all the same” is incorrect.
I drink about two glasses of milk per year so to me milk is milk, but my wife swears she can taste a difference between the brand she likes and just about any other brand.
Not a hippie about food. Yet.
When I was pg this year, I noticed our Dean’s milk tasted strongly of corn. Nasty. I bought it several more times and it was the same. I’m not the most prolific milk drinker so it has to taste as good as it can get.
Someone above mentioned sour cream and the thickening agents. I totally agree…no guar gum for me. I buy Michigan brand cottage cheese for the same reason; try it if you can. Breyers ice cream has been ruined by gums now, as have most yogurts. 
The only thing I wanted to add: growing up, I heard a bazillion times how Baltimore had a couple/three dairies (in the '40s/'50s), and at certain times of the year milk tasted downright odd because the cows were eating the wild onions. I would assume that is no longer the case (the onions, I mean).