Food Prices

A. Save a cash register receipt from a shopping trip to the food market or borrow one from a family member or friend. The cost of 4 prepackaged food items that are sold by weight and the cost of at least 3 fruits or vegetables need to appear on the receipt. If you have no access to a
receipt with these items, then you will need to go to the store and write down the cost information.

b. Fruits and vegetables are sold by the pound. Add up your total cost for the fruits and vegetables and find the average cost per pound. [Example: if bananas are .79 per pound and apples are .59 per pound, the average is calculated like this: (.79 + .59)/2 = 1.38/2 = .69 per
pound on average for the two fruits.
Correction: should read "Add up your total cost per lb for the fruits and veg..". That's why in their example they add 0.79 and 0.59, not how many lbs of bananas or apples you might actually buy.

c. Locate the weight of your prepackaged food items. [For example, on a box of Frosted Flakes it says 15 oz., thus it is sold by weight not by volume.]

d. Add up all of the weights for your prepackaged items and then add up all of the costs for your
four prepackaged items. Correction: Replace Question by For each item take it's cost and divide by it's weight in ounces.
This is the per oz cost for the item. I hope you see that we are trying
to get the same data as for the "fruits and vegetables" except here it is in cost per oz.

e. From the totals, find the average cost per ounce of prepackaged items. Convert your results
to cost per pound; using proportions will help. [Hint: How many ounces in a pound?]This question means: add up the total cost per oz for the prepackaged items and find the average
cost per oz. Then convert to average cost per lb.

f. Now, compare the cost per pound of unprocessed food compared to prepackaged processed
food.

Prepackaged food
1) Top Ramen Noodles-$.84-3 oz
2) Special K Cereal-$2.50-11.2 oz
3) Sloppy Joe-$.83-15 oz
4) Mac and Cheese-$1.10-6 oz

Produce
1) Strawberries-$2.50-1 lb
2) Sweet Potatoes-$.78-1 lb
3) Seedless Grapes-$1.78-1 lb