I tried orange squash from Lidl, Asda, M&S & 6 more – £1 bottle was better than Robinsons
Orange squash is an essential drink that most British households will stock in their kitchen cupboards. It enhances water's flavour and ensures children consume adequate fluids, especially now that the weather can be humid.
Nevertheless, with a bottle of Robinsons costing £2.50, expenses can rapidly accumulate if you're purchasing this product frequently, just like other items you may use daily, like butter and, more typically, toilet paper.
Most supermarket own-brands hover closer to the £1 price point — so is that additional £1.50 or thereabouts genuinely justified, or are you simply paying for the brand name?
These were the queries I aimed to resolve, and to accomplish this, I sampled orange squash from Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose and M&S and measured them against Robinsons orange squash to determine if any matched the same quality or exceeded it. Regarding how the beverages were prepared, 15ml of concentrated squash was blended with 135ml of water.
Robinsons
Beginning with the market leader in squash, we have Robinsons, for numerous decades linked with Wimbledon. It boasts a brilliant orange hue that remains bright even when watered down in a glass.
Presentation, naturally, excels here, expertly crafted, attractive colours, everything you'd anticipate from the leading brand, but it's the flavour that matters, so let's examine that.
Robinsons takes pride in producing squash that delivers "real fruit" taste; nevertheless, it possesses a somewhat synthetic flavour.
Rating: 7.5/10
Aldi
Moving on to Aldi, a supermarket brand renowned for its budget-friendly pricing, this juice was the joint-third cheapest of all, costing just 89p. Aldi's double-strength 20% fruit squash in the bottle bears a similar hue to Robinsons—a vibrant and fresh orange that induces thirst.
Regrettably, it slightly missed the mark in terms of taste. While still palatable, it wasn't as memorable as the leading brand, and certainly left less of a lasting impression, tasting noticeably cheaper in quality, which, considering the price, is perhaps to be expected.
Rating: 5/10
Lidl
Lidl's own offering at 89p appears almost identical in colour to the classic Robinsons in the bottle, a real burst of bright orange. However, this one did lack the sweetness you get from Robinsons, but it still makes a decent alternative.
Rating 6.5/10
Tesco
Next in line is Tesco, which surprised me with its performance. For just 45p, you can't really grumble too much about this one. Whilst not bursting with flavour, there is plenty of it, and it doesn't overpower either, which can often be an issue with double-strength versions of squash.
Rating: 6/10
Asda
Asda's orange squash is notably cheaper than Robinson's and all the other brands, retailing for the same price as Tesco. Unfortunately, it didn't taste as good.
Perhaps it had a slightly unfair advantage because I tried it further down the list, but in comparison, it tasted like vaguely flavoured water. It completely lacked the punch of orange squash, despite claiming to be double strength.
Rating: 3/10
Sainsbury's
I am convinced the 49p Sainsbury's bottle of orange squash is identical to the Tesco version. Both have the same packaging, minus the branded sticker, and have the same level of sweetness and fruitiness.
Rating: 6/10
Morrisons
This 99p orange squash from Morrisons looked more like long-life orange juice rather than an enticing hydrating drink. But once combined with water, the appearance improved. The flavour wasn't the most intense, and it was on the sweet side, but it's still good value for money and does the job while saving a lot compared to big brands.
Rating: 5.5/10
Waitrose
Expecting big things from the £1.30 Waitrose orange squash, I was sadly disappointed. It was sweet, but lacked flavour. I found the Waitrose squash to be a bit lacking in its orange flavour, not leaving the same fruity aftertaste as the ones from M&S and Robinsons.
Rating: 6.5/10
M&S
Made with 20% real fruit. M&S' £1.10 squash has one of the largest portions of real fruit, which probably explains the higher price tag, although it is still cheaper than a bottle from Waitrose or the market leader.
This one has a more grown-up, authentic flavour and colour than some of the other squashes on the market. It's not too sweet, which may not appeal to little ones as much, but adults may prefer this version; I definitely did. Plus, it does away with sweetener-style aftertastes.
Rating: 10/10
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Powys County Times
7 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Mother of Air India crash victim ‘heartbroken' after remains wrongly identified
The mother of a British Air India crash victim has said her family is 'heartbroken' after receiving news the remains of her son were wrongly identified, The Sunday Times reported. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a medical college shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport on June 12, killing 241 people on board. Some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed, making it one of the deadliest plane crashes in terms of the number of British fatalities. Among the British victims were Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, 39, and his husband Jamie, 45, who had been returning to Britain after celebrating their wedding anniversary in India. Mr Greenlaw-Meek's mother, Amanda Donaghey, told The Sunday Times she flew to India after the crash in order to find her son's remains, providing a DNA sample at Ahmedabad's Civil Hospital to assist the identification process. Following a match on June 20 last year, she returned to the UK with Mr Greenlaw-Meek's coffin. But on July 5, as Mr Greenlaw-Meek and his husband's families prepared to bury the married couple together, police told Ms Donaghey that DNA tests carried out in the UK showed Mr Greenlaw-Meek's remains were not in the coffin. 'We don't know what poor person is in that casket,' she told The Sunday Times. 'I had my doubts but to be told that was heartbreaking. 'This is an appalling thing to have happened,' she added. 'And we would now like the British Gvernment to do everything in its power to find out, and bring Fiongal home.' It was revealed last week the coffin of another repatriated British victim, 71-year-old Shobhana Patel, contained remains of multiple people, The Sunday Times reported. Mrs Patel was killed alongside her husband Ashok, 74, as they returned to the UK from a Hindu religious trip. Their son Miten Patel told The Sunday Times: 'There may have been a mistake done. 'But for religious reasons we need to make sure my mother is my mother and not somebody else's remains. 'Knowing 100% that it is my mum is very important to us.' Shobhana and Ashok Patel were laid to rest last week, The Sunday Times said. International aviation lawyer James Healey-Pratt, whose firm Keystone Law is representing families of victims of the Air India crash, has told Times Radio the identification issues have raised concerns over the total number of victims whose identities may have been misattributed. 'We know that 12 caskets were repatriated from India to the UK,' he said. 'Of those 12, two had been mishandled, misidentified. 'And so if you extrapolate that sample, you're looking at 40 mishandled remains out of 240. 'So that's a very large number, but we simply don't know. 'And to date, the Indian authorities have not been transparent or helpful about that, which is why there was pressure put on by the families to the FCO and the Prime Minister's office. 'And this was actually mentioned in the meeting at Chequers between Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Modi on Thursday. 'So the families are waiting to hear, first thing next week, about what actions are really being done in India to provide some degree of assurance.' It is understood no blame is being put on any UK agency for the blunders, Mr Healy-Pratt previously told the PA news agency. The only surviving passenger on the plane was Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who previously told The Sun it was a 'miracle' he was alive but felt 'terrible' he could not save his brother Ajay. A preliminary report into the incident from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found both of the plane's fuel switches moved to the 'cut-off' position 'immediately' after take-off, stopping fuel supply to the engine.
Scottish Sun
12 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Air India crash victim's mum horrified as authorities send wrong body back to the UK in a casket
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A MUM whose son died in the Air India plane crash has been left horrified after authorities sent the wrong body back to the UK. Amanda Donaghey, 66, was left heartbroken and appalled after DNA evidence proved Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek's casket actually belonged to another victim. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 6 DNA evidence proved Air India crash passenger Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek's casket actually belonged to another victim Credit: Shutterstock Editorial 6 Fiongal and husband Jamie filmed themselves waiting to board the doomed plane Credit: Instagram 6 All but one passenger died when the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft crashed in Ahmedabad, India Credit: Reuters Fiongal, 39, had been to India celebrating his wedding anniversary with husband, Jamie, 45. The pair were all set to fly home to Britain on the doomed Flight AI171 when disaster struck just a minute into the journey. Moments after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport, the pilots lost altitude as the plane came crashing towards the ground. Footage captured the moment it smashed into a medical college hostel. A total of 241 passengers and crew plus 19 people on the ground were all killed in the tragedy - including 52 Brits like Fiongal and Jamie. Amanda initially believed the two men had caught a flight home two days earlier until she received an emotional phone call from the dad of Fiongal. A brave Amanda then flew out to India shortly after being told both men were on the plane when it crashed. She went to look for her son or, in the worse case scenario, bring his remains home. She told The Sunday Times: "Visiting the site and seeing it was something I felt like I had to do. I wanted to understand what had happened. "I remember all these burnt trees. The trees were scorched black. But there were still birds and squirrels in those trees, which I found quite profound. How pilots cutting engines sparked TWO plane disasters after South Korea & India crashes as calls for cockpit CCTV grow "It was like a bomb site. You would think it was from a war scene, but there were still these small birds twittering." Hours after the crash, it was confirmed that only one person had survived the accident. Despite the tragedy, Amanda remained determined to help find Fiongal's remains. She gave blood to help find a DNA match before being informed officials had found the body and sent it back to the UK. Jamie had already been identified by this point with both men's families hoping to lay them to rest next to each other. Amanda rushed back to the UK hoping to say her final goodbyes after being assured that Fiongal was in the casket. The family had started to plan Fiongal's funeral when they received a gut-wrenching phone call from the police. A British coroner had completed a second, more thorough DNA test on the remains which were inside the casket. Fiongal's tragic final video A HEARTBREAKING final video posted by Fiongal came just hours before their tragic death in the Air India crash. In the chilling final clip filmed at Ahmedabad airport, Fiongal and Jamie, dressed in floral shirts and visibly happy, reflect on their trip. Fiongal says: "We are at the airport just boarding. Goodbye India. Ten-hour flight back to England. What was your biggest takeaway Jamie?" Jamie responds: "I don't know," prompting Fiongal's laughter and a teasing, "Thanks for your contribution." Fiongal jokes that his main lesson was "don't lose your patience with your partner," to which Jamie smiles and replies, "You snapped at me at the airport for having chai." Passengers mill in the background as Fiongal adds: "I'm going back to Britain happily, happily calm." Earlier social media posts from the couple showed their experiences in Ahmedabad, including a seven-hour car journey to a stunning hotel. In one clip, Fiongal lies on a large bed beside a giant swing, describing the hotel as "beautiful" and saying he felt "very, very happy." Their time in India was captured in a series of posts showing henna tattoos, shopping for fabrics and gifts, and riding in a tuk-tuk through busy streets. On their final night, Fiongal reflected: "So, it's our last night in India and we've had a magical experience. Some mind-blowing things have happened. "We are going to put all this together and create a vlog. It's my first ever vlog about the whole trip and we want to share it." Jamie added: "We have been on quite a journey and then spending our last night here in this beautiful hotel, it's really been a great way to round off the trip." They did not belong to Fiongal. "It was heartbreaking," Amanda said. "We don't know what poor person is in that casket. This is an appalling thing to have happened." Amanda's experience is tragically just one of many parents struggling to find closure after the crash due to a mix up of many caskets. NHS microbiologist Shobhana Patel, 71, and her husband Ashok, 74, both died in the crash. The couple, from Orpington, Kent, were repatriated in different coffins but DNA tests in Britain found other body parts along with Shobhana's. One heartbroken family was even forced to cancel funeral plans due to the mix-up of bodies, the Mail Online reported. And in another harrowing mistake, "commingled" human remains - consisting of body parts of more than one victim - were reportedly packed into a casket before being shipped to the UK. It is thought that only Indian authorities carried out DNA tests on victims with no input from any international agency. India's Ministry of External Affairs said: 'All remains were handled with professionalism.' Brit families previously slammed the chaotic ground operation following the horror smash on June 12. One relative reportedly blasted the "lack of transparency and oversight in the identification and handling of remains". 6 Brit families previously slammed the chaotic ground operation following the horror smash on June 12 Credit: AFP 6 Vishwash Ramesh was the sole survivor of the Air India crash Credit: Dan Charity
The Guardian
14 hours ago
- The Guardian
Edinburgh University had ‘outsized' role in creating racist scientific theories, inquiry finds
The University of Edinburgh, one of the UK's oldest and most prestigious educational institutions, played an 'outsized' role in the creation of racist scientific theories and greatly profited from transatlantic slavery, a landmark inquiry into its history has found. The university raised the equivalent of at least £30m from former students and donors who had links to the enslavement of African peoples, the plantation economy and exploitative wealth-gathering throughout the British empire, according to the findings of an official investigation seen by the Guardian. The inquiry found that Edinburgh became a 'haven' for professors who developed theories of white supremacism in the 18th and 19th centuries, and who played a pivotal role in the creation of discredited 'racial pseudo-sciences' that placed Africans at the bottom of a racial hierarchy. It reveals the ancient university – which was established in the 16th century – still had bequests worth £9.4m that came directly from donors linked to enslavement, colonial conquests and those pseudo-sciences, and which funded lectures, medals and fellowships that continue today. Sir Peter Mathieson, the university's principal, who commissioned the investigation, said its findings were 'hard to read' but that Edinburgh could not have a 'selective memory' about its history and achievements. In an official statement, Mathieson extended the university's deepest apologies for 'its role not only in profiting materially from practices and systems that caused so much suffering but also in contributing to the production and perpetuation of racialised thought which significantly impacted ethnically and racially minoritised communities'. The investigation also found that: The university had explicitly sought donations from graduates linked to transatlantic slavery to help build two of its most famous buildings, Old College on South Bridge in the 1790s and the old medical school near Bristo Square in the 1870s. The donations were equivalent to approximately £30m in today's prices, or the higher figure of £202m based on the growth of wages since they were received, and as much as £845m based on economic growth since then. The university had at least 15 endowments derived from African enslavement and 12 linked to British colonialism in India, Singapore and South Africa, and 10 of those were still active and had a minimum value today of £9.4m. The university holds nearly 300 skulls gathered in the 1800s from enslaved and dispossessed people by phrenologists in Edinburgh who wrongly believed skull shape determined a person's character and morals. Fewer than 1% of its staff and just over 2% of its students were Black, well below the 4% of the UK population, and despite Edinburgh's status as a global institution. The report's authors said their findings raised serious questions about the university's role as the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries when it became famous for the work of luminaries such as the economist Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume. The fact its history was in part 'connected to slavery and colonialism, the violent taking of bodies, labour, rights, resources, land and knowledge is deeply jarring, not least for an institution so closely associated with the humanistic and liberal values of the Scottish Enlightenment', it said. The report's authors urged the university to redirect the money from those bequests to hiring academics from Black and minority backgrounds and on research and teaching about racism and colonialism, partly to combat the institutional racism that permeated the institution, they argued. Among a sweeping series of 47 recommendations, the review's authors have also asked Edinburgh to support the unadoption of the definition of antisemitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) because it stifled 'free conversation' about Israel's policies and actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Most UK universities recognise the IHRA definition. The review also called on Edinburgh to urgently sell off its investments in companies with significant contracts with the Israeli government. Mathieson said Edinburgh was 'actively' reviewing its support for the IHRA declaration and its investments in Israel-linked companies after a series of protests by staff and students who have accused the university of complicity with Israeli actions in Gaza. He added that he recognised the strength of feeling but said he could not commit to withdrawing support for the IHRA definition or to divest in companies facing boycott until those reviews were complete. 'Obviously this is a very hot, contemporary topic,' he said in an interview with the Guardian. Mathieson said the decolonisation report had reached 'deeply shocking' and 'really discomforting' conclusions, including the discovery in student notebooks from the 1790s that one of its most famous moral philosophers, Dugald Stewart, had taught thousands of students that white Europeans were racially superior. Ironically, Stewart and his mentor Adam Ferguson were 'lifelong abolitionists' yet their theories of race had been used to justify slavery in the American south. The university had to accept harsh truths about its past activities, as well as bask in its successes, Mathieson said. This review, he added, was the most extensive investigation of its kind carried out by any university in the UK. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion Mathieson said: 'I think a lot of the report is hard to read, but I have confidence in its accuracy because I trust the experts that have produced it. I think we were seeking the truth – that's really the purpose of a university, and it includes the truth about ourselves as well as the truth about anybody else.' Mathieson and university executives set up the review, which was chaired by Prof Tommy J Curry, a specialist in critical race theory, and Dr Nicki Frith, an expert in reparations, in response to a groundbreaking review in 2018 by the University of Glasgow on its links to slavery and the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, which also affected Edinburgh. Among other findings was evidence that the university had invested endowments derived from African enslavement into government war bonds, colonial bonds and buying Scottish Highland estates, and had received money from taxes levied on ships transporting sugar and tobacco from those plantations. The university had reacted to the abolitionist cause with 'inertia', the report finds, by not joining three other Scottish universities and colleges who had petitioned parliament calling for the abolition of slavery, even though Edinburgh had professors at the forefront of abolitionist campaigning. Curry said: 'Scotland has a moral debt to pay by sustaining an ideology that helped to exploit, kill and dominate racialised people for centuries. 'There's no argument against the fact that the people who orchestrated colonialism came from Edinburgh. It is not the only place they came from, but the University of Edinburgh was at the forefront at that time of creating and proliferating those theories.' Edinburgh became one centre of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when some staff and students demanded it rename a tower block named after Hume, the Enlightenment philosopher who published an overtly racist footnote that upheld the notion that black people were inferior. To the fury of some historians, the university agreed to temporarily rename the building '40 George Square'. A further review by the university has recommended the change of name should be permanent and that a new naming committee investigates renaming another modern building named after Dugald Stewart due to his theories of race. Mathieson indicated the university will accept many of the recommendations of the decolonisation review submitted by the 24-strong team of academics, researchers and consultants, but others would require consideration and external funding. 'If at the end of it we lose courage because we don't like the conclusions, that kind of invalidates the original decision to do the work,' he said. 'We knew that this was not going to be pretty.' The university will set up a new race review implementation group which will actively support the review's call for Edinburgh to establish a centre for the study of racisms, colonialism and anti-Black violence, he said, by helping find philanthropic donors and external funding, and find rooms for a community space. Mathieson said the university also had a lot of work to do to understand why it had so few Black staff and students. In contrast, a third of its students are Asian, including nearly 9,300 students from China. Edinburgh would 'undoubtedly' fund new scholarships for students from minoritised groups, he said. 'Some of the university's resources can be and will be diverted to this.' Even so, he said, the university may be unable to repurpose some bequests linked to slavery or colonialism if their terms restrict the money to specific purposes.
