Consumed Buying Guides FAQ

The TL;DR on how we make our recommendations

The Internet is awash with taste tests – for boxed mac-and-cheese, spaghetti sauce, potato chips,  you name it.  It makes sense. As any food marketer knows, though people may say that all sorts of other things matter to them when choosing a product, the reality is that taste always comes first. 

But even if taste is number one, there are plenty of other factors that play into our buying decisions. Price (obviously). Convenience. Nutrition.  Environmental impact. Animal welfare. This is especially important with staple foods, the ones we buy every week, and in categories where, frankly, the flavor of various products may not be all that distinctive. (Just try to discern a flavor difference between, say, an organic and a pasture-raised egg!)

So Consumed Buying Guides take into account all the factors that play into your decisions at the grocery store. We consider a product’s taste, plus its impact on the planet, your wallet, and your personal health. 

Which products we review:

Initially, Consumed Buying Guides will focus on grocery staples; the things like chicken or eggs or milk or yogurt or tomato sauce that you buy on a regular basis. (Though we’ll sometimes go off-piste to highlight seasonal or holiday products.) 

We only review products with national (or nearly national) distribution. This was a hard choice because there are many terrific startup food brands and regional producers. We hope you support those companies, if you like their food. But we’ve limited our contenders to ones that our readers are likely to find in the course of their regular weekly grocery shop, wherever they live. 

Typically, we don’t include private label brands in our testing. The main reason for this is that you can only find those products if you visit a specific grocery chain, and that’s not realistic for many readers. The lack of transparency in private label products can also make it difficult for us to get all the information we like to have in terms of how that item was made, where, and by whom.   

How we rate our products: 

Nutrition: We love food. So we are not looking for foods with the least fat or no sugar, especially at the expense of taste. But we are reviewing staples! If something is in your regular rotation and there’s a health(ier) option, we’re going to seek it out. 

We also try to avoid, where possible, any ultra-processed ingredients or chemical additives.  This is not because we believe any processing or emulsifier or stabilizer is inherently bad for you, but you may as well avoid them when you can.

Finally, when we think about personal health, it’s all about context. So yes, grass-fed beef has more Omega-3s than corn-fed beef but that isn’t a reason to go out and eat tons of grass-fed beef. The fact is there aren’t that many Omega-3s in any kind of beef, and plenty of drawbacks. (If you are seeking out Omegas, eat salmon!). So, yes, we look at the numbers. But we are also making a judgment call on whether the so-called benefits are truly helping you in the context of your overall diet. 

Sustainability: We know more than we care to about the food industry’s drag on the planet, from greenhouse gas emissions to erosion to biodiversity loss. This is why, where possible, we recommend certified organic products. Is the standard perfect? No. But it remains the strongest and most rigorously audited standard for food in the United States: a floor, not a ceiling. 

That said, organic is more important for some foods than others (especially ones made primarily from highly processed ingredients) and we will always look for a conventional and more affordable option. In general, though, if you can afford an organic option and it’s available, we recommend that you buy it. 

Price/value: This job would be easy if we just recommended extremely expensive food that has the luxury of being perfect in every way. But that’s neither convenient nor (usually) affordable. Our Buying Guides look to highlight foods that offer legit bang for your buck.  So we might pick a $6 tomato sauce that has almost everything over a $10 jar that ticks all our boxes. 

Value, of course, is subjective. It all depends on your price range. But on the whole, we’re looking for places you can save money or for tradeoffs that we think are worth making. 

Questions? Let us know. 

If you have any product you’d like to see a buying guide for, email us: consumednewsletter@gmail.com