The UK is a set of nations that love a biscuit, with a favourite among them being the humble chocolate digestive. The original digestive was first developed all the way back in 1839, with it first being manufactured by McVitie's in 1892. It took another couple of decades for the chocolate version to be produced in 1925 and it has remained as a firm favourite ever since.
While McVitie's is obviously the main name associated with the chocolate digestive many other brands make their own version. All you have to do is wander into the biscuit aisle of any supermarket and you'll find their own version alongside the big-hitters. The vast majority of the time they'll also be cheaper so it got me wondering which would be the best one in terms of value for money and taste.
Therefore, I decided to pick out a cheap, mid-range and expensive chocolate digestive to test this out. On a personal level, I find the dark chocolate digestive to be superior to the milk chocolate one, so I sought out those. I picked out dark chocolate digestives from McVitie's, Aldi and M&S (Image: Newsquest) In the end, I went for packets from Aldi, Marks and Spencer and McVitie's.
McVitie's was the most expensive of the bunch (Image: Newsquest) Weight : 266g Price : £2.25 (84.5p per 100g) McVitie's was first up in my comparison, with it being the original, and it was definitely the most expensive of the bunch.
Thankfully, the taste was as delicious as always and I noticed that the biscuits were slightly bigger than the ones offered by Aldi and M&S. Score : 8/10 The Aldi digestives were the cheapest of the three packets (Image: Newsquest) Weight : 300g Price : 77p (25.6p per 100g) Aldi was up next and was by far the cheapest of the trio at just 25.
6p per 100g. I remember buying a fair amount of these in my university days and they were as good as I remember. The taste was delightfully sweet and there was very little difference to the far more expensive McVitie's.
Score : 8/10 The M&S digestives were the mid-priced option (Image: Newsquest) Weight : 300g Price: £1.25 (41.6p) M&S's dark chocolate digestive served as the mid-range counterbalance to McVitie's and Aldi.
In terms of taste, there was again not much to differentiate from the other two. The only slight foible was that it was a bit firmer to bite into than the other two. Score : 7/10 Recommended reading: Overall, there was very little to separate the three varieties of dark chocolate digestive and I was left with a bit of a dilemma.
While this may seem quite harsh I decided to put the M&S version at the bottom, purely because of the firmness in comparison to the other two. It is obviously still worth buying but small things made all the difference at this stage. Finally, in terms of picking a winner, I decided to go for Aldi just because if offered practically the same product as McVitie's at a much more reasonable cost.
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Food
I tried cheap and pricey chocolate digestives and a 77p one rivalled McVitie's
I tried out dark chocolate digestives from Aldi, M&S and McVitie's to see which one was the best and which offered the best value for money