Initial Conditions

I saw some odd things happening in the supermarket recently. Of course that assumes that amusing number oddities can “happen”.

The first concerned tuna. Cans of tuna were 56p each, but you could buy a four-pack for £2,25. To save you having to do the maths, 4 cans bought “loose” cost £2,24 , thereby making this less expensive than the four pack by a penny. Economies of scale dictate that buying in bulk means that everything is cheaper on average, so this took me somewhat by surprise.

But then I thought that perhaps Sainsbury’s was being a bit clever, for when you buy the four pack, you get an unnecessary extra bit of packaging (a plastic wrapper), so that extra 1p goes towards that. Pay less, get less packaging! And as we all know less packaging=good, so perhaps Sainsbury’s is trying to help the environment by stealth. However I doubt this, since most people wouldn’t bother working out the difference that buying them loose would make, much less worry about the extra penny. But if that is what they want to do, then kudos.

The other thing was Sainsbury’s “reduced sugar reduced salt” baked beans, which, it turns out, seem to be less healthy for you than the “standard” version. They contain a whole 2 (yes TWO) extra calories, not to mention 0,2g of saturated fat. On the upside they have 3,6g less sugar and 0,5g less salt. Mind you, two calories is but 0,1% of your RDA and the saturated fat counts for about 2% whereas the salt reduction is a whopping 5%.

In any case, the mistake that I made was to assume that somehow the “reduced” beans  were “healthier” and although they never said they were, this is presumably what they want people to believe. Well I say that, but they are both the same price, so it’s not like they make extra money from it.

Finally, I came to the realisation that “half price” is a vastly better offer than “two for the price of one”. Ostensibly they are very similar, but the good thing about half price is that the initial financial outlay is lower i.e. to take advantage of the offer you only have to pay for half a thing rather than a whole thing. The other aspect is that you can just buy one thing, whereas if a free thing is forced upon you, you may not end up using it, particularly if it is perishable, so that will just have been a waste of packaging, as well as your money if you only bought the thing for the offer. BOGOF stationery, however, is great.