Supermarkets are fiendishly clever at making us part with our money and one of the ways they do it is to package things attractively for us. How much easier it is to grab a bag of carrots, for example than to rummage through a pile of them.

Easier, maybe (though to be honest how long does it take to pick up a few carrots?) but it certainly costs you. Not just the unit price per kilo which is invariably higher, if only by a few pence but the fact that you end up with more than you actually need.

Today I checked the prices of carrots in Sainsbury's. 64p per kilo loose against 69p a kilo packed. Only 5p difference but it's far more likely that you need a couple of carrots or even 3 or 4 than 9 or 10 which probably means you're spending 3 or 4 times more than you need. You could have got those carrots for 15-20p.

With other vegetables the difference between loose produce and wrapped was more marked still. Broccoli was £3.30 per kilo wrapped compared to £2.99 per kilo loose. Onions were 12p per kilo cheaper loose than wrapped (73p compared to 85p). I bet you could have got them cheaper still in a market but that's another story . . .

 

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