As the price of food keeps going up, it’s getting harder for my family to justify the extra cost of buying organic and brand-name products over generic ones.

That’s led us to take a fresh look at grocery coupons. A huge $201 billion worth of coupons was distributed last year for food and other common supermarket items, according to the PMA Coupon Council. But consumers redeemed just $2.2 billion, or about 1%, of these. Even a small sliver of these could help clip higher food prices, which the Agriculture Department this week said would rise between 4.5% and 5.5% this year, adding about $350 to a typical household’s expenses.

In an effort to get our hands on some of this free money, we tested some Web-based services that promise easy access to discount coupons. Some of the sites allow users to print coupons directly, while other services, for a fee, clip the coupons from newspaper inserts and mail them to you. And many manufacturers’ own Web sites offer coupons for both new and popular products…