The cheapest ways to buy your fruit and veggies revealed

Do you know what’s cheapest when it comes to those healthy staples, fruit and vegetables?

Australian financial analyst Ross Greenwood was on the Today Show this morning talking about the difference in supermarket packaging for fruit and vegies; the loose, and the pre packaged. Which one do you think he said was cheaper?

When it comes down to bang for your buck he said the packaged good were most often cheaper… but not always, so it paid to do the conversion yourself. That cost rose too if at the end of the week you were throwing out half the packet because the items had spoiled before you had a chance to eat them. The results he was talking about were from a study by Nine News.

Greenwood said the trick was to buy what you were going to use. If you only eat a small amount, and that meant going to your local green grocer and just buying one or two items at a time, that would be the cheapest option.

But if you are going to make good use of the bulk pre-packaged items, you could save the most, so don’t let some pre-conceived ideas put you off buying them.

Greenwood said many people were often wary about the contents of pre-packaged good, feeling like they might be inferior products, and a way of getting rid of old stock. It’s not necessarily the case, he said. Instead, it was a way for supermarkets, to actually save costs, because pre-packaged items were easier to move around and stock on the shelves, and easier to put through the checkouts too, so it meant less labour, hence a saving in wages, and then a saving to you. He said it was something Aldi did regularly to keep their prices down.

This article originally appeared on Starts at 60.