Saving money on produce

How’d he do that?

In this video, I purchase the same exact apple twice from the same grocery store. The first time I paid $1.81 for the apple and the second time I paid $1.71 for the apple? Why? I removed the stem from the apple and removed it from the plastic bag. Why pay for stem and bag that you have no use for?

Now many of you may be saying, well it’s only 10 cents. And a dime is nothing to get excited about, but consider that it was just one apple. If I had purchased 10 apples, we’d be looking at savings around $1. Again, nothing to get too excited about, but we can combine this tactic with other produce savings tactics below and over the course of your lifetime, the savings start to add up.

One of the biggest excuses for not eating healthy is that healthy food is too expensive. There is a lot of truth to this, however, it’s also true that we often ignore very simple ways to reduce food costs.

Here’s another example: There are two kinds of produce signs at the grocery store, one is by weight, like the apples in the video ($2.99/lb for instance) and the other is by item (3 cucumbers for $1.00). If you’re being charged per item, you should look for the largest pieces of produce available. You’d be surprised how much bigger a watermelon or cucumber can be than the one sitting next to it on the shelf. Of course, if the item is priced by weight, this trick will not work.

Finding the deals

Another trick is to look for sales on organic produce items. It’s generally true that organic produce is healthier than conventional produce. However, if you’re trying to save money, you’d be foolish to simply ignore organic produce and go straight for the conventional produce. It’s very common to see an organic item on sale for less than price of the same conventional item. If there’s organic strawberries for 3.99/lb. and conventional strawberries for 4.50/lb., you would be foolish to buy the conventional strawberries because you’d be paying extra for the same product that’s actually less healthy for you because it’s been treated with carcinogenic pesticides. For two videos on hidden ingredients in produce, click here. For a video on why produce size matters at the store, click here.

Does organic produce taste better? It depends who you ask. Some people notice a difference and others do not. Some people claim it’s a placebo effect. After years of eating strictly organic produce, I’m confident I can tell the difference, but if you’ve never had organic produce, give it a shot and see what you think.