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Courtney Orton reportingIf you've been to the grocery store lately, you've noticed you're spending a lot more than you used to. The culprit: energy. In particular, the rising production of ethanol, a biofuel made from corn. On top of that, there's also the spike in the price of crude oil, which makes it more expensive to transport and package foods.
Eyewitness News went to five stores with a list that included common items like milk, eggs, trash bags and laundry detergent.
We bought identical items when we could, but when we couldn't, to make it fair, we used simple math to make them identical.
To give you an example, Albertsons, Smith's, and Target sold 17-ounce boxes of General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios. Dan's and Wal-Mart sold 12 1/4-ounce boxes. In those cases, we converted the prices to price-per-ounce. It was a very busy day of shopping.
We spent the most at our first stop: Albertsons. The grand total after converting the price of certain items was $73.05.
Smith's was next at $68.62, then Dan's with a total of $68.54.
At Target, our groceries came to $60.51, and our lowest total bill $56.35 at Wal-Mart.
That's a $16.70 difference between the highest store and the lowest. Save that much every week and it would add up to a savings of more than $800 a year.
Here's a look at what makes up that difference: A gallon of milk was the most expensive at Target. It cost us $3.89. But at Smith's, it was only $2.90.
A 40-ounce jar of Jif peanut butter cost us $5.99 at Albertsons, Smith's and Dan's. But at Wal-Mart, we paid $4.28. That's a $1.71 difference, and those little differences add up. If you saved that much every week on peanut butter, you'd save almost $90 a year.
General Mills' Honey Nut Cheerios were the most expensive at Albertsons at 31 cents per ounce. Compare that to 24 cents at Dan's, 26 cents at Smith's, 18 cents at Target and 22 cents at Wal-Mart.
But this story isn't about changing where you shop, because saving has everything to do with "How You Shop," and you can change how you shop wherever you shop.
There's something that we've all heard before: go generic. We found it costs you more than 50 percent not to, and you really don't have to sacrifice quality because many of the national brands now make generic brands.
Tomorrow, you'll might be surprised to find out which store has the cheapest generic-brand prices.
You can find today's shopping list by going to the related link.
E-mail: corton@ksl.com
