The true cost of going organic

Tempted by a leaflet from Abel & Cole that dropped through the letterbox last week offering a free £15 fruit and veg box if I spent more than £25 with them, I decided to give organic food a go. Whilst the choice may not be as wide as a supermarket I have to say the selection on offer was certainly very tempting and if I hadn’t been watching the cost of my shopping basket carefully I could have easily spent a fortune. But I remained frugal and my shopping came in at £26.79 entitling me to the free fruit and veg box. 

Putting the debate about whether organic is really better for you aside and focusing on just the cost I did a quick comparison of how much similar items would normally have cost if I had been shopping with Tesco. Normally I wouldn’t normally limit myself to organic so I didn’t do so in this comparison, but I did ensure my comparison was with something of what I perceived to be of similar quality. As expected the supermarket is far cheaper as the same shopping list would have only cost me £15.86 from Tesco.

However I still had the free fruit and veg box from Abel & Cole, so I also calculated how much that would have cost me had I been shopping at Tesco (excluding the stuff I would not normally have bought). In total they would normally have cost £10.88, bringing the total cost at Tesco to £26.74. So despite getting all my fruit and veg for free, Abel & Cole came out slightly more expensive. If I had remained loyal and shopped at Tesco I could have saved myself 5p and earned clubcard points worth 26p. Oh well, lesson learned.