Choice exposes the premium you pay for pre-chopped vegetables

LAZY or busy consumers are paying up to six times more for pre-sliced, diced and chopped produce compared with buying them loose.

CONSUMERS too busy to cut up vegetables are paying up to six times as much for pre-sliced, diced and chopped produce compared with buying it loose.

A Choice review of pre-prepared packages uncovered “convenience” price premiums of 80 to 500 per cent. The snapshot survey compared same-quantity cost for loose vegetables versus ready-to-use diced pumpkin, carrot sticks, topped and tailed beans, sliced mushrooms, corn cobettes, broccoli florets and cauliflower “rice”.

Choice spokeswoman Stefanie Menezes said supermarkets were stocking a growing range of pre-prepared fresh produce to cater to busy lifestyles.

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Some shoppers also bought convenience vegetable packs to reduce food waste.

“Buying a single-serve package might make more sense if you live on your own,” Ms Menezes said.

“It can be hard to get through a whole cabbage when you only need a small part of it to make a coleslaw for one. Living in an apartment without access to composting might also be a barrier, as there’s nowhere to dispose of your carrot peelings or corn husks.”

The price of pre-sliced vegies can be exorbitant. Picture: Alex Coppel

Pre-prepared vegies were also seen as a way to encourage consumption, given only 7 per cent of adults ate the recommended five serves a day.

When it came to time saved, Choice declared prepared cauliflower and pumpkin the best “convenience value”, and corn and broccoli the least.

A volunteer team armed with knives, peelers and a box grater who were put to a vegie preparation time test took a mere 62 seconds on average to cut broccoli into shape.

Grating cauliflower into fine particles was the most taxing task at an average 7 ½ minutes, while pumpkin preparation averaged 6 minutes and 20 seconds.

Ms Menezes said that while a food processor was often faster than preparing by hand, it still needed to be set up and then cleaned.