TO COME FROM SAME FACTORY

a batch – for itself. The paler specimens from round the side are destined for an own-label packet.

It’s the same at a freezer plant – the smallest, sweetest, most evenly sized peas go to the premium brand while the supermarket gets what’s left. So

● Muller light, 68p ● Aldi’s Brooklea light, 29p Packaging: Similar but not identical pots. At 175g, the Aldi version weighs 15g more than the Mueller version. The colour schemes are different – all the Muller flavours are blue while Aldi uses red for strawberry and yellow for vanilla. Aldi also boasts it’s made with British milk while Muller pushes that it’s zero per cent fat and has zero per cent added sugar.

Same format for both.

● McVitie’s digestives, £1 ● Sainsbury’s digestives 60p Packaging: McVitie’s distinctive red has been copied by every other biscuit wannabe. Sainsbury’s take on it is quite modern with a nod to mid-century design. Package sizes are different. McVitie’s is 400g (possibly to bring the price point down) while the own-brand version is 500g. how do you pin down which specific products come from the same places?

The most important clue is the tiny code printed beside the best before date on the label. These are used by the maker and the store to identify when the product was made and what

YOGHURTS

These are slightly different – the Aldi yoghurts contains fructose syrup, which is why they’re not sugar free.

The colour, smell, flavour and texture of the strawberry yoghurts are exactly the same.

The Aldi vanilla yoghurt has the same custard yellow colour and texture but is a tiny smidgeon sweeter than the Muller offering.

DIGESTIVES

Different. McVitie’s has two letters and two digits, Sainsbury’s has a 12-digit number.

Slightly different. The Sainsbury’s biscuits have partially inverted refiners syrup – a cheaper form of sugar – further up the ingredients list. At McVitie’s, this is further down the list meaning there’s less of it.

Sainsbury’s is smaller, paler and lacks the wheaty crunch of the real thing. factory or production line it came from. If these are similar, chances are they are from the same place. If they are a completely different format, they are probably from different suppliers.

We tested several products said to be made in the same factory.

● Ambrosia Devon custard £1 ● Tesco custard 70p Packaging: Ambrosia is heavily branded, with a country cottage, fluffy clouds and lots of mentions of Devon. Tesco goes along the same lines – a giant bowl of custard with a hillside and tiny house in the

CUSTARD background. The package size are different – 750g (Ambrosia) and 500g (Tesco). Ambrosia has the Red Tractor farm assurance label for its milk and the Vegetarian Society logo. Both have a four-digit number beginning with 92.

The Tesco version is made with reconstituted skimmed milk and reconstituted buttermilk while the Ambrosia version is made with the real things. Both contain palm oil.

The Ambrosia is thicker and is less aggressively sweet. But the difference is tiny and would disappear once it was poured over apple crumble.

● Hula Hoops, six-pack, £1.25 ● Aldi’s Snackrite hoops, eight-pack, 95p Packaging: Red is the official colour of the potato ring and Aldi has copied pretty much everything about the KP original apart from the word “hula”. At 25g, its bag is 1g bigger than the KP version. They also come in different sizes of multipack.

Identical format, both

CRISPS begin with 929 and end with H4F.

Identical apart from the addition of potassium chloride in KP’s hoops.

A teenager claimed to get more of a salty bite from the KP version. (Maybe it was the potassium chloride.) An adult could not tell the difference between the two.