5 Convenience Foods Nobody Needs

I see them at the grocery store and wonder, "Why would anybody buy this?" But many food products people think of as time savers are hot sellers, despite their added expense and the minimal time savings.

When you buy convenience foods, you're paying someone else, usually a corporation, to do a job for me. The extra money you're spending is money that you (or a member of your family) trade time for. If you're buying a lot of convenience products because your job leaves you with no extra time, your life might actually be harder than it needs to be. So consider that next time you're looking at products that seem "convenient."

Here are five common "convenient" products that might actually be costing you more dearly than you think, and how much you're actually paying to save a little time. All grocery-store prices come from Peapod, in mid-November 2010.

Uncrustables
A packages of four Uncrustables frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches costs $3.59. It takes about two minutes to make and bag a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a lunch box. I grab two one-ounce slices of bread ($0.20), spread half an ounce of peanut butter ($.09) on one slice, a half ounce of grape jelly on the other slice ($.04), put the two pieces of bread together, cut the crusts off, and place the sandwich in a fold-top bag ($.01). The total cost: $0.34.

Each Uncrustable frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich costs $0.89. If I were to eat it right away, I'd have to spend time defrosting it and the time savings would be negligible. If I put the Uncrustable in a lunch box, I'd probably still spend about a minute finding it in the freezer. So if I were buying Uncrustables, I'd save only about a minute. And I'd be paying $33/hour for this time saving. Compared to some of the other products in this article, though, that $33/hour is a relative bargain.

Prebagged Shredded Iceberg Lettuce
An 8-ounce bag of shredded lettuce sells for $1.99 on Peapod.

I have a lettuce dryer (salad spinner), but even when I don't get it out I can wash and dry iceberg lettuce in about two minutes. I might then spend another minute shredding the iceberg lettuce with a knife. So the total time savings is about 3 minutes. A head of iceberg lettuce ($1.89) usually weighs a little over 2 pounds. So the equivalent weight of shredded lettuce would cost $7.96. Based on a time savings of about 3 minutes, I'd be paying the company $120/hour to bag and shred my lettuce.

Yes, it is a pain to wash lettuce. That's why I wash and bag my lettuce as soon as I bring it home from the grocery store, not while I'm trying to cook dinner.

One-Ounce Bag of Baked Lays
In most office vending machines, a one-ounce bag of Baked Lays costs about $0.75. I can buy a 9-ounce bag of Baked Lays for $3.79 when I'm already at the store and spend about 2 minutes portioning it into 9 separate zippered bags ($.36). This compares with a cost of $6.75 for nine one-ounce bags from the vending machine. The cost difference is equivalent to paying the vending machine company $78/hour for convenience. This, however, does not take into account the time spent walking back and forth to the vending machine, which is probably greater than the time it takes to potion out a larger bag of chips.

Bottled Water
A 24-pack of 16-ounce bottles of Dasani water was on sale for $4.99 at Peapod. It takes about 30 seconds to fill a 16-ounce reusable water bottle with filtered water from my refrigerator and costs essentially nothing. Compare that to the cost of a bottle of water ($ 0.21). Since bottled water is often no better than filtered tap water--and may be tap water--there's little difference in quality. That means paying the company about $25/hour to fill the water bottles.

Premade Tuna Salad
A 3-oz package of StarKist Sandwich Ready Tuna Salad costs $1.99, or $3.98 for 6 ounces. A 12-ounce tub of tuna salad from Peapod's deli costs $6.99, or $3.00 for 6 ounces. A 5-ounce can of tuna costs $1.00, and an ounce of Hellman's mayo costs $0.18. If I splurge on albacore tuna, I can expect to spend $1.99 for 5 ounces. Mixing the mayo and the tuna takes about 1 minute. Thus, I'd be paying $152/hour for the time savings associated with deli tuna salad versus tuna salad made with chunk light tuna in the can, and $109/hour for deli tuna salad compared with tuna salad made with albacore tuna. If I bought the StarKist Sandwich Ready Tuna Salad, made with chunk light tuna, I'd be paying the company $168/hour to make my tuna salad for me.