Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Ad of the Week: Del Monte Canned Corn

According to Del Monte's latest commercial, you get a whole lot more corn for a better price when you buy a can of corn rather than fresh or frozen, and there's virtually no difference between the three.

Let's see. Right now corn is in season, so it's on sale for .19 cents an ear. A 15.25-oz. can of Del Monte canned whole kernel corn is $1.49. You can buy 8 ears of corn for $1.49, which I reckon could fill about 4 cans (which brings the total up to $5.96). And right now at my grocery store a 16-oz. bag of frozen whole kernel corn is on sale for $1.09 through October of this year. (Full disclosure: It's normally $1.83.)

Maybe there's something wrong with my math, but I don't see the price of Del Monte's corn even coming close to fresh or frozen. It gets more interesting when you look at the ingredients of the three items:
Fresh: Corn
Frozen: Corn
Del Monte Canned: Corn, water, salt
It's kind of funny. When I was younger, I preferred canned corn to frozen. Most likely it's because that's what I grew up eating. The canned corn had more flavor, and was more firm than the frozen. But now that I have been eating only fresh and frozen, I find that it was the salt in the can that made it taste better to me, and made it seem more firm. Of course fresh is best, but for my money, when it's out of season frozen is the next best thing.

Another advantage of using frozen over canned is that you don't have to use the whole bag at one time. I open the package, take what I need, close it back up, and leave it in the freezer until the next time I need it.

I know this is a little one as far as the gap between the ad and the product goes, but still, the gap is there. And even if the canned corn really were cheaper, I'd still buy the frozen. All things considered, it's still the better value to me.

3 comments:

Usha said...

Interesting post, if I cannot get fresh I almost always prefer frozen because canned sometimes contains sodium in larger quantities than I prefer....this post makes me even more glad I avoid canned :-)

dejamo said...

Likewise, Usha. It's hard for me to believe that I used to prefer canned over frozen.

The only canned I used to get was shoepeg white corn for a specific recipe but my local grocery store stopped carrying them. Then I discovered that they had white corn in the frozen section so I was good to go.

And it if it's still up there, I find it highly ironic that the banner ad at the top of my blog is for the Del Monte Fitness Center.

Tara said...

Great read thaank you

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