Call me a snob, but I used to think of generic or store brand products as being inferior in quality to the highly recognized, big brand name products. That opinion was reinforced in my early young adult years when I bought generic strawberry preserves and found the leaves still attached to the strawberries. Not appetizing! Since starting the Blood Type Diet, however I have found to my surprise and delight that some store brand products contain fewer additives and fewer avoids than name brand products.

For instance, all of the nationally advertised cooking sprays contain avoids. However the low priced Hill Country Fare generic contains only Canola Oil, soy lecithin, water and propellant. I now use it for all my baking.

I had never looked at the ingredients in salt until Heidi's column mentioned that most salt contains a Type O avoid - dextrose. Even the health food store brands contain dextrose! But my store brand generic salt contains no dextrose, only two anti-caking agents.

I have written before that the two Type As in my family are not ready to give up tomato products. One of the reasons is pizza and another is sloppy joes. After I started the Blood Type Diet, I was going to make sloppy joes with ground turkey instead of ground beef, and put my sauce on a large salad while the As had theirs on bread. I know I should make my own sloppy joe sauce, but the main advantage of this meal is that it is fast, so I was using the nationally advertised brand. I looked at the label and the #2 ingredient was corn syrup. No more sloppy joes for me! Yesterday my daughter had a friend over and they wanted sloppy joes for lunch. As I was picking up a can of sauce, I noticed a store brand next to the name brand. There is no corn syrup! Sugar is the #4 ingredient and there are no chemical additives. Sloppy joes for me again!

Not all store brands are better. The store brand of black-eyed peas contains as many chemicals and avoids as the big name brands. Bush and Eden are the best canned black-eyed pea choices in my stores.