Something better to do » tuna http://blog.kamens.us Musings of an indignant mind Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:35:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 StarKist Chunk Light Tuna goes head-to-head with Stop & Shop’s and loses http://blog.kamens.us/2009/03/10/starkist-chunk-light-tuna-goes-head-to-head-with-stop-shops-and-loses/ http://blog.kamens.us/2009/03/10/starkist-chunk-light-tuna-goes-head-to-head-with-stop-shops-and-loses/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:56:53 +0000 jik http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/?p=443 Cans of tuna in American supermarkets used to hold 6 ounces.  Then, a number of years ago, the manufacturers all decided to shrink their cans to 5.5 or 5.45 ounces without lowering the price.  More recently, they all decided to go down to 5 ounces, again without lowering the price.

Annoyed by this most recent change, I decided during a recent trip to the grocery store to reevaluate our tuna buying habits rather than blindly continuing to buy StarKist, the brand we had settled upon a number of years ago for unremembered reasons.  Therefore, although I did throw a few cans of StarKist chunk light tuna in water, SKU 806730, in my cart, I also threw in a few cans of Stop & Shop’s, SKU 21120 02522, which were needless to say cheaper than the StarKist.

The next time I made tuna salad, I opened two cans of the StarKist and two cans of the Stop & Shop tuna, drained them all, visually inspected them for quality, and weighed the tuna left in the cans after draining.  The results surprised me.

  • As noted above, the Stop & Shop tuna is significantly cheaper than the StarKis.  Advantage: Stop & Shop
  • The StarKist cans had, on average, 3/8 ounces less tuna than the Stop & Shop cans.  Advantage: Stop & Shop
  • The Stop & Shop cans had nice looking chunks of tuna in them, while the StarKist cans had what would be more accurately described as “shredded” rather than “chunk” tuna.  Advantage: Stop & Shop
  • The Stop & Shop tuna tasted significantly more salty than the StarKist, and indeed, the nutrition information confirmed this (13% DV per serving vs. 8%).  Advantage: StarKist

Overall, if you can live with the extra salt (literally and figuratively), the Stop & Shop tuna is clearly a much better buy than the StarKist.

Now who said that name brands are better?

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