Baked beans definitely belong to the shopping cart of every student. Cheap and nutricious meal that can be enjoyed by anyone who can get through the struggle of opening a can. If you are like me, the variety of products in a supermarket can leave you stunned for about 15 minutes, while you are trying to find the difference between those 5 cans of baked beans. They cost pretty much the same, similar nutricional values... you just can't get your head around it.
There is this option of following the brand. You kinda assume that Heinz is going to have better beans than the ones from Tesco. Plus from time to time you see non-students having them in their cart - so they must be better. Or so you think. When you finally get them on your plate, you start to contemplate whether the taste is really that different from those from Tesco, because you just can't see the difference. You even start to think that you would be better buying the cheapest ones, saving few pennies that you are sure to miss in a pub. You slowly move into a state of big depression and nihilism.
Life in Northern Ireland is much more expensive than at home. It also feels like that there is much more brands than at home. And the difference between the cheapest and Heinz beans is 50p, which is a huge difference,
So, I got an idea - if there is no substantial taste difference, why spend more money than neccessary? I was not joking when I said that it is a huge difference. If I eat 4 cans of BBs every month, than we are talking about 2 pounds every month, 24 pounds every year and 120 pounds in five years - and how often do you find that on the ground? After some shopping, I gathered 8 different kinds of BB, 7 friends (whom I would like to thank again), and conducted the Big Baked Beans Experiment.
The main hypothesis was:
There is almost no taste related difference among different BBs
The participants were examinig following properties: first impression, odour, colour of the sauce, appearance and texture of beans, taste, and final ipression, on a scale from 1 - 10.
It was clear that there was no big difference among them even before I'd started the evaluation process. 7 out of 8 sample scored pretty much the same result. The only product that scored much worse was Tesco Healthy Living Baked Beans. To my surprise, Heinz BBs scored the best (having one percent more than the second). We must also keep in mind that the difference between the first and the seventh place was 3,1 per cent.
In the second kind evaluation, I took the final score and calculated the price/performance ratio. These results were a bit more conclusive.
Quality test
1. Heinz Baked Beans - 72,7%
- the best performance in three categories: odour, appearance and texture of beans
- re-occuring comment about the small size of beans
2. Branston reduced sugar and salt - 71,6%
- the best performance in categories taste and overall impression
- the worst performance in the category odour
3. Tesco Baked Beans - 71,3%
- the best result in the category first impression
- many comments about sweetness (it really has the highest amount of sugar from all tested)
4. Marks & Spence Baked Beans - 70,5 %
- the best result in the category colour of the sauce
5. Tesco Everyday Value - 70,3 %
- the best result in the category appearance of beans (the same as Heinz)
6. Daily Basics Baked Beans - 70,1%
- the worst result in categories first impression and appearance of beans
7. Weight Watchers from Heinz - 69,6%
- the worst result in the category colour of the sauce
8. Tesco Healthy Living - 64,2%
- the worst result in categories texture of beans, taste and overall impression
Price - performance score
1. Tesco Everyday Value - 28.12 points
2. Daily Basics Baked Beans - 28.04 points
3. Tesco Baked Beans - 22.29 points
4. Tesco Healthy Living - 20.06 points
5. Branston reduced sugar and salt - 11.02 points
6. Marks & Spencer Baked Beans - 10.85 points
7. Heinz Baked Beans - 9.69 points
8. Weight Watchers from Heinz - 8.71 points
Charts
Conclusion
The experiment proved two things
1. Healthy food tastes awful
2. Apart from price, there is no big difference
What are the consequences?
If you are looking for an overall impression, go for Heinz. Even though they won with a very small difference, they managed to won in three categories while not losing a single one.
If you are looking for the price-performance ration, go for the cheapest or the second cheapest ones.
If you do not want to buy the most expensive ones and not feel like a grouch, go for Branston. They are a bit cheaper than Heinz, while scoring the best in taste. They also have less sugar and salt (healthier). On the other hand, they probably stink.
You also need to consider that the price was for a single can. You can definitely get a better price by buying a larger pack or with some kind of discount.
Next time you go shopping, remember me.
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