Be Sure You Get Your Money's Worth When Buying Produce

Here's a simple money saving tip from A Tip a Day with Ellie Kay: 12 Months' Worth of Money-Saving Ideas:

Weigh your produce. Not all ten-pound bags of baking potatoes and other produce are created equal. Some bags of oranges, apples or grapefruit can vary by as much as almost a pound. One five-pound bag may weigh 5.5 pounds and another may weigh 4.6 pounds. Take two minutes to weigh three different bags and get the one that weighs the most.

I'm not the main food shopper in our house (and certainly not the key produce buyer), but this tip still surprised me. I guess I put too much faith in labeling. Or maybe this isn't that great of a tip after all. Can anyone out there either verify or refute this idea?

Comments

[Minimum Wage]

I have occasionally weighed bags of oranges and apples, and have always found them to be very close to the weight on the label, maybe an ounce or two more. Did it once with potatoes and was satisfied. Since all of these have unit weight of several ounces, I don't expect a bag to have exact weight, but I've never noticed a short weight.

I'm guessing that some supermarkets might have tighter supplier standards than others.

[moneyandpf]

I don't usually worry about things like this. Usually I can just eyeball the bag and decide that way.

[JBM]

One of my friends worked at Tyson and they had to came up with a way to be within a 0.25 lb on their family pack. A couple of the major chains made them go to that method, before they were only required to be within 10% of what was actually on their standard package.
As far as fruit and potatoes, I look for the package that has the least damaged goods. Some times I was cutting away 1/4 of the piece of fruit to get rid of the discolored parts.

[Lin]

I weigh mine, though I've never found a bag of produce with a half-pound difference .. usually a quarter pound at the most.

[Minimum Wage]

Some produce items are NOT priced by weight. For example, garlic bulbs and heads of lettuce are rarely if ever priced by weight.

While it's easy to feel the difference between a 1-lb head of lettuce and one that weighs two pounds, I often weigh to choose the one that's 2.0 pounds over one that's 1.8 lb. I don't see others weighing lettuce, so I'm probably just weird on this one.

[Lee]

I weigh EVERYTHING and like Minimum Wage I also weigh my lettuce. That way I always get more for my money!! And there is often at least 8 to 10 ounce difference in the bags of produce.