Bell Peppers: The hunt for a better deal gets complicated.

Fred Slocombe
1/10/2010

On my continuous quest for the best

deal, and because I have so much
free time on my hands, I compared
prices on some vegetables between
Aldis on Wabash and Schnucks on
Iles, Saturday, January 9, 2010.

The Bell Peppers at Aldis were pre-

packaged in shrink-wrap, so at
Schnucks I purchased as close to an
identical item as possible. Schnucks
had a shrink-wrapped package of 4
peppers while the Aldis package
had 3 peppers.

The packages were not labeled

“organic” and they were not in
areas labeled “organic.”

Per pepper, Schnucks was $0.57

and Aldis was $0.63, simple
enough, right? Not quite.

The weight on Schnucks package of 4 peppers was 14 ounces. The weight on Aldis package of 3 peppers
was 20 ounces. What could account for such a disparity? Doing only the math, per pepper, Schnucks was
3.5 ounces, while Aldis was 6.67 ounces. Per ounce, Schnucks price was $0.16 while Aldis was $0.09.

Maybe, the weight difference is in the subspecies characteristics of the

plant. The ovule in the Aldis peppers might be twice as large which
would mean more waste, or the ovary and nectary might be twice as thick
which could mean more value, or it might be a fifty-fifty split that would
still mean a little more value in each Aldis pepper. That was one
assumption.

Here’s a little plant biology for Bell peppers. Bell Peppers are considered
fruits. The part we eat is actually the ovary and nectary of the plant and
the part we discard is the ovule (or ovules).
http://www.beeculture.com/content/pollination_handbook/chap_6.html

The ovule(s) of the bell pepper easily separates from the plant after cutting it
once. Don’t waste good food by carving it up like you were making a Jack-o-
lantern. I see Food Network cooks do that and I just shake my head.

When I cut the Aldis and Schnucks peppers in half, I didn’t really notice a visual difference on the inside.
Something about this was starting to really bother me.

How could a package of three bell peppers weigh more than a package of four? When I unpacked the
peppers and laid them side-by-side it appeared that three of the four peppers from Schnucks were larger
than the rest, which should lend more weight to the package of four. I was baffled by this discrepancy.
The Schnucks peppers came from Mexico and were packaged in St. Louis. They may have lost moisture
during the shipping. I did see some slight wrinkling, but I couldn’t sense much more of a difference. I have
no idea where the Aldis peppers originated but they were packaged in Minnesota.

Does each pepper lose around half its volume of

moisture during shipping from Mexico?

It’s around 1200 miles from Juarez to St. Louis. I don’t

know the distance from the farm to the Mexican border,
or the time between the actual harvest and when the
package was stamped with the weight. Let’s assume
that a pepper loses 3 ounces of moisture on that trip.
That would mean about 1 ounce for every 400 miles.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s

Agricultural Research Service published an article
online titled Improving the Sensory Quality and Shelf
Life of Fresh-Cut Fruit Products which states “When
stored under ambient conditions, control bell peppers lost almost 25% weight per unit surface area (SA) in
78 h.” 1 This document explains the use of various wax-like coatings to preserve moisture in bell peppers
and may explain how the Aldi peppers came to be so much heavier, strange since per ounce, the Aldis
peppers were cheaper.

Measure By weight or by diameter.

The United States Department of Agriculture divides green bell peppers into three categories. USDA Grade
Fancy requires that Bell Peppers be no less than 3 inches in diameter, USDA Grade 1 is no less than 2 ½
inches. Since peppers may very drastically in weight because of the size variations of the ovules inside
which we cannot see before making a purchase, peppers are best valued individually by their outside
diameter.

J&M Industries makes a box for shipping bell peppers “White/Generic Print/Wax Cascade
Bell Pepper Box 16.5 inches, by 11.75 inches, by 11.625 inches2 called the “1-1/19 BU vegetable box,”
slightly over a bushel depending on the size of the pepper. According to Wiki.answers.com, the container
can weight between 25-28 lbs.3

A pound is 16 ounces. Given the maximum weight of 28 pounds (400 to 448 ounces) according to
Wiki.answers.com, there should be room in the bushel shipping box for 128 Schnucks peppers, or 67.2 Aldi
peppers.

The box, 2253.8 cubic inches, containing USDA Grade A 3” peppers, should have a capacity of around 83
peppers. Of course I arrived at this number using cubes instead of the natural shape of the peppers, so I
imagine I’m off by a bit, but the difference of 61 peppers between Aldis and Schnucks leaves me mystified
as to which number might be too small or too large for the box.

I noticed that some peppers lose their shine and then wrinkle over time. Marita Cantwell of the
Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis published an article “Recommendations for
Maintaining Postharvest Quality” for bell peppers that “Storage at 7.5°C (45°F) is best for maximum shelf-
life (3-5 weeks).”4 The higher temperature of the grocery store produce section may provide half that shelf-
life. Now I understand why the grocery store charges a price for each pepper instead of charging a price per
pound.

1
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/Publications.htm?seq_no_115=239667
2
http://www.jm-ind.com/packaging/item0009.html
3
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_pounds_are_in_a_bushel_of_med_sized_green_peppers
4
http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/Produce/ProduceFacts/Veg/pepper.shtml