Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
It's definitely the season to buy fruits and veggies, but is eating right making your budget tight? We went shopping and got a closer look at how you shop for produce.
Some stores, like Whole Foods Market, specialize in organic produce. Sunflower Farmers Market says it carries "serious food for silly prices." And regular supermarkets carry both organic and conventional produce.
To find out who has the best-priced produce, we took a small shopping list to four different stores.
We found the best-priced tomatoes at Sunflower Farmers Market for $1.79 per pound. They were quite a bit more expensive at Whole Foods Market. We found tomatoes there were priced at $3.99.
Harmons and Smith's didn't carry organic tomatoes, but they did have conventional. However, neither beat the price at Sunflower Farmers Market.
When it came to strawberries, Harmon's had the best price, but just by penny. The organic, once again, cost more.
We couldn't find organic strawberries at both Whole Foods or Sunflower Farmers Market, but we did find conventional strawberries. The 16-ounce container cost the most at Whole Foods.
While organic foods normally cost more than conventional foods, we found one exception. A bunch of conventional romaine lettuce at Sunflower Farmers Market cost 88 cents. At Harmons, an organic bunch cost the same.
This is obviously a small, unscientific snapshot of what it costs to buy produce at each of these stores. If you want the best deal possible, you might want to plant your own garden, which a lot of people are already doing.
There's also another option: Community Supported Agriculture. That's where you pay a farm up front to provide you with produce all summer long. It costs anywhere from $20 to $40 a week.
You can find our full shopping comparison and a link to Community Supported Agriculture by clicking the related links.
E-mail: corton@ksl.com
