Brand name products vs generic products

October 8, 2007 – 7:43 pm

Brand name products are usually more expensive than their generic counterparts, but is there really any difference between them and is it worth buying the brand name item? It’s a hard question to answer and a lot of it will come down to personal taste and choice, but hopefully this article will give you a few indications of what to look for and how to make your decision.

The first thing worth knowing is that often the generic item – be it baked beans or ibuprofen tablets are often made in the same factory this is because a factory that is set up to manufacture baked beans will do so for many different companies, and could even produce two or more variants of the same thing for the same company – so they might make Tesco value baked beans and also Tesco healthy living baked beans & a standard version for Tesco as well and they might also make baked beans for other companies. This doesn’t mean that they are identical, but they can be. With baked beans for example, a company like Heinz or Cross & Blackwell may specify that they want the beans used to be no smaller than a specific size, as well as wanting slightly higher quality ingredients in their sauce and they will use a very specific sauce recipe that they’ve put a lot of research into. So this will mean that all the beans are graded first and only the larger ones used in the more expensive product, where as all the smaller beans may then be designated for the cheaper brands where size matters less. The differences will be small, slightly more or less salt, sugar or tomato for example. In the long run, the size of the bean doesn’t matter much, but the flavour does, so with something like baked beans, it’s worth trying some of the cheaper brands to see if you like them – if you do, then buy them, you’ll save yourself a fortune. In this instance, it’s all a matter of taste. The same will apply to most food products, from frozen peas to spices to cereal. It’s also worth looking at the nutritional information on the packet or tin as well, sometimes the calorie or fat content can be higher in a cheaper brand, sometimes lower, so learn to read these as well and make sure you compare like for like by looking at the per 100g quantity not the per portion quantity as different companies will suggest different portion sizes sometimes as well.

For over the counter drugs such as ibuprofen or paracetamol for example you aren’t really buying them to enjoy their taste, although having a sugar coating on them might make them pleasanter to swallow. So with things like you need to look at the ingredients and know what the active ingredient is in order to make your choice. A packet of 16 Nurofen (brand name) tablets containing 200mg ibuprofen – which is the active ingredient – will cost around £1.50, where as a generic pack of ibuprofen (that’s a non-branded or cheap brand), will cost you around 30-50p for the same number of tablets containing the same quantity of active ingredient. It is important to look at the active ingredients in these and to note how much of the active ingredient is contained in each tablet. If your generic tablet contains less of an active ingredient then it’s going to be less effective. If the active ingredient content is the same, then they are the same strength of medication and it may only be a difference in the amount of bulking agent or the coating that’s different.

With drugs, when a new medicine is introduced onto the market, only the patent holder is allowed to produce it. Then after about 10-12 years the patent runs out, and other drug manufacturers are allowed to produce it. These new manufacturers will often sell it cheaper than the original brand and it may be sold under a generic name or a new brand name.

My personal opinion is that I tend to go for generic versions of things like Ibuprofen or Paracetamol that are coated so that I don’t taste them as I swallow. This means they’re not as expensive as the brand name item, but not as cheap as an uncoated version. Again it’s down to a personal preference, but at least if you know that the active ingredient is the same and of the same quantity you can make your decision knowledgably. For more information on drug brands and their generic equivalents a good site to look at is this one: http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/diseases/medication/generic-vs-brand-names