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Comment by iamshs | Hacker News Reader

This is what I would like to know more about. Other day I picked up a 32oz smoothie, which said this is equivalent to 40 strawberries, 1 banana and 6 apples. How is that possible in only $5? Do they get fruits so cheap to make up for other costs? And true enough, there was strawberry puree, banana puree but apple juice concentrate and apple puree in it.

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From what I understand, fruit is a LOT cheaper at the "source" -- before they're shipped, individually sold, etc. Which is why it's SO much cheaper to buy jam, than to make it yourself.

However, if you think of it purely from a volume standpoint... if you stuck 6 apples and 40 strawberries in a blender, I have a feeling that's gonna add up to significantly more than 32oz. Maybe they're really tiny apples...

Also, they can use fruit that doesn't look as pretty or is lower quality. Fruit used for juices are those not pretty enough to sell, fruit used for concentrate is those not tasty enough for "pure" juice.

> Which is why it's SO much cheaper to buy jam, than to make it yourself.

Thats news to me. I mostly can weird stuff you can't buy off the shelf in America for obvious reasons, like peach rum sauce (basically a boozy peach smoothie) or brandied every fruit you can think of (brandied apples are my favorite)

Anyway buying individual serving fruit is probably going to be as uneconomical as buying single serving jam, pretty expensive.

When I buy a couple shipping flats of peaches, for example, its only a couple bucks each. Ditto crates of apples. At least in season. I think if you bought one apple at a time from a convenience store that could add up, but to keep an apples-to-apples comparison (groan) you'd need to compare that to the price of single serving jam packets, which are kinda expensive compared to an entire jar.

There's quite a good amount of fibre waste when you pass a fruit through a juicer. Maybe that explains the 32oz.

In an ideal situation you process the fruit locally before it is transported. That's why basic orange juice is cheap, it is processed into a concentrate block before being shipped to the destination.

As others have said, there is huge savings from buying wholesale too.

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