The Secrets of the Supermarkets Rip Off Food

Food. It's big business. Now, each year,

we spend something like £5,000 per household on food and drink.

So the competition for your pound is tough.

We'll leave no shelf untouched in our quest to champion you,

the weekly shopper.

This is a series in which we'll expose the hidden rip-offs

and let you in on the tricks of the food trade.

And, most importantly, we'll show you how to be a smart shopper.

Welcome to Rip Off Food.

Today we're checking out supermarkets.

We're going hi-tech to show you how they can influence

what we buy without us even knowing it.

You actually can put stuff in the trolley with no mental recollection of doing it. It's habit.

How the packaging on some of your purchases could leave you wanting more.

-Oh, my goodness, it's a third full.

-Absolutely.

And how Britain's dairy farmers believe they are being milked for all they've got.

We cannot wear these price cuts

and it's literally driving farmers out of business.

The UK grocery market is worth over £150 billion

and it's dominated by the supermarkets

where 82% of that money is spent.

Now, around a third of the products displayed are special offers.

But what you may not realise

is that some special offers are not that special.

In these times of austerity, a discount will always attract our attention.

So when supermarkets put products on special offer

it's only right that most customers take it for granted

that there is a bargain to be had.

-We're suckers for it, aren't we?

-We are, yeah.

-Yeah.

Every time I go shopping, I'll look for what's on offer

and that kind of influences what I buy really.

Yup, anything you can get better value for.

I've no loyalty to any particular brands.

You sometimes find that the price is really exaggerated

so the special offer is actually the normal price.

I'm always very cautious cos I don't know why it's a special offer,

what makes it cheaper now.

I'm always looking for a low price but if there's buy-one-get-one-free then defiantly, yeah.

A recent survey by consumer champion Which?

followed the fluctuations of almost a quarter of a million prices at supermarkets around the UK

between January 2011 and February 2012.

They described what they found as "dodgy pricing tactics"

because some of the special offers weren't what they appeared.

The supermarkets would like us to believe we are all getting a bargain

but if you look behind the prices, if you look at the details,

watch out, you might not be getting the special offer that you thought you were.

This is happening even though government introduced

a Pricing Practices Guide in 2010 to stop consumers being

misled by special promotions.

The guideline states that a product can only go on special offer

if the price has remained the same for 28 days before being reduced.

But Which? found that in some cases these rules weren't being followed.

A trick that came up time and time again

is the price of a product being whacked up

just before it was put on special offer.

So it looks like your saving a big deal on the previous price.

Actually that was roughly the price you would have paid a few weeks ago anyway.

Not so special.

One example the survey highlighted was a so-called special offer

on strawberries by online supermarket Ocado.

The fact is that the price of the strawberries had been increased

by 49p for less than two weeks before it was reduced

and then put on special offer.

Clearly against the guidelines.

And then the special offer lasted for nearly three months.

Well, I don't think that's playing by the rules, do you?

The special offer price running on and on and on for weeks if not months.

It's not special if it's the price that

it's on display for week after week after week.

Another example highlighted

was an ASDA multibuy offer of ten Muller yoghurts for £4.

That's 40p a pot.

While a single pot cost 61p.

So it seemed a good offer.

But directly before and after the multibuy offer period,

a single pot of Muller yoghurt cost only 30p -

which would have meant that ten pots cost £3.

Not such a bargain multibuy offer after all.

They blame human error but really it's just incredible

to believe that across these hundreds of thousands of examples

it's simply down to individuals getting it wrong.

This looks systematic to us across lots of supermarkets.

They now need to clean their act up.

If they won't, then it's time for the government to step in,

toughen up the rules and properly enforce them.

Otherwise it's consumers that will foot the bill, yet again.

Ocado told us that they are committed to providing clear

and accurate information and that regrettably on this one

isolated occasion this specific promotion did not explain

their offer in the required detail.

They are committed to ensuring this doesn't happen again

and will continue to heavily monitor their processes accordingly.

We contacted ASDA who said that this was a rare instance of human error

and this year they will move from a manual to an automated system.

They added that meanwhile in May

they implemented a new checking procedure

across the entire ASDA grocery website

to ensure all price cuts are triple checked before they appear online

and appointed an independent audit team to monitor

the prices displayed to spot and remove any pricing errors.

Supermarkets use special offers to tempt us into their stores.

And when it comes to staple products like milk

they constantly compete to offer the cheapest pinta.

But is it Britain's dairy farmers who are actually paying the price for cheap supermarket milk?

The dairy farming industry is in crisis.

Since the year 2000, nearly half of Britain's dairy farms have disappeared,

most because they just couldn't make the business pay.

Supermarkets have a huge impact on the price of food produced in this country

and nowhere is this more keenly felt than amongst the dairy farmers.

In Somerset, Neil Darwent has herd of 350 cows producing three million litres of milk a year.

Fluctuations in the price he's paid per litre has a huge impact.

Our milk prices recently have been cut

from around about 28.5p a litre to just over 27p per litre.

Now that 1.5p per litre price cut might not seems a lot

but it actually means that's £30,000 off our income in a year.

When we spoke to him in June 2012 he told us he was being

paid 27p a litre but it cost 30p a litre to produce the milk.

And at the same time production costs are rising.

The key inputs that you need to run a farm like the food,

the labour, fuel to run the machinery, are all going up

and that would affect a lot of other businesses as well as farming.

The problem for us is there's only so much we can do

to counter that in our business.

The milk is sold to a processor,

the middle man between dairy farmers and supermarkets.

At the moment we're sending

something like 7,000 litres of milk a day off

and that goes off to one of the major processors and the processors

are the people who take our milk, pasteurise it, maybe bottle it

maybe change it into something else like cheese or yoghurt.

Whether his daily batch of milk ends up in supermarkets

or with food manufacturers,

Neil believes that it's the supermarket's push for profit

that is driving down milk prices.

The supermarkets are enjoying a really healthy return on their milk sales.

A little over a year ago they were enjoying a margin of 22p a litre

for every litre of liquid milk that they sold,

whilst processors were making 2p to 3p a litre margin

and farmers were losing 2p to 3p.

What's happening now is that in an attempt to woo customers with cheap food,

supermarkets are cutting retail prices

but they are still trying to maintain their margins

by effectively keeping the price squeezed at the bottom end.

And it's this assessment of the market that has caught

the imagination and support of politicians and celebrities

who are backing the dairy farmers' campaign for a better deal.

Tim Farron is MP for Cumbria - a major dairy faming area.

Well, the figures obviously fluctuate

but we know the supermarket's mark up, in other words the profit

that supermarkets make from milk, has roughly tripled over the last decade

and we know that the price that farmers receive,

certainly any profit that they ever receive,

has either stayed the same or decreased.

Neil and his fellow farmers' demands appear modest.

We're producing a good healthy food product here.

I think that we have to see prices of milk go up in store

but it is again about the retailer sharing some of that reward

they are getting with farmers.

I don't think we need to double the price or ask for a huge increase in price of our milk,

we just need a fairer share of the pie.

So I'm going to meet Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium,

which represents the major UK supermarkets,

to find out what's gone wrong.

Why is this phrase "cheap milk" just so vital to the supermarket?

See, milk is definitely one of the staples.

We all know milk, bread, eggs, for example.

The things that we buy very regularly

and we sort of keep an eye on what the price is.

It's a good indicator of the general standard of value

that a retailer can offer you. So what we're looking to do

is get people into the store and when they're in there looking at milk

and buying their milk, they'll buy all their other groceries.

OK, you're happy. The consumer's definitely happy.

Sadly, it's the farmer that's not happy at the moment.

There are so many farmers

who are genuinely worried about having to sell their farms,

give up their herds and change businesses.

So, you're going to have to help me here

by trying to nail it as to what the problem is.

The problem is other companies and the government

and all the other buyers of milk other than supermarkets

need to follow the lead of the supermarkets.

-So what is the lead? Spell out the lead.

-The lead is to work with your processor.

So if you're buying a lot of milk like the government does,

for example for prisons and hospitals and schools et cetera,

do a proper deal with a processors that specifies the price that you'll pay to your dairy farmers

and make sure therefore that a sustainable price gets to the dairy framers.

-Let's talk a little about the processor.

-OK, the processor -

that's where the debate needs to be.

The processor and the dairy farmer, who's in it for a sustainable future?

Because we are, we're in it for a long term future.

Are the processors in the same place that we are with their farmers?

-And are they?

-Well, you need to ask that then, Gloria?

You know the business, are they or...?

Well, I think they need to look at what they're doing.

We can put our own house in order,

we're not going to lecture other people but what we will do is

we will say we blazed the trail in trying to get progressive,

sustainable supply chains. If we can do it, why can't others?

So are you now telling me that the farmer shouldn't at all be rankled

with you, the retailer, at all, it should be just the processor?

Yeah, it's not us, not the supermarkets this time.

We sorted our house out and other people need to follow us.

But Tim Farron is not convinced.

They are clearly the villains of this piece.

The supermarkets are saying they, in their direct contract with farmers, pay a fair price.

That's broadly at least sometimes true but there are very few...

A small percentage of milk produced in this country is sold directly farmer to supermarket.

The overwhelming majority of milk is sold through the processors.

And so of course the supermarket is saying blame the processors

but then who do you think the processors sell the milk to?

They sell it to the supermarkets

and the supermarkets say what price it expects to pay

so of course the supermarkets are to blame

and their hands are dirty in this particular case,

as are the processors,

but it's simply a case of a system of very powerful supermarkets,

a handful of very powerful processors

and thousands of dairy farmers who are exploited.

And the supermarkets need to confess their part in all this

and help contribute to making it better.

We asked Dairy UK, which represent the processors, to comment.

They said, "Dairy processors have not created this difficult situation

"for farmers which has arisen because dairy markets have fallen

"because too much milk has been produced relative to the demand globally."

They added that dairy product markets are now much more

volatile than before but lower milk production will generate

higher market returns and farmers will reap the benefit of this.

By October 2012, commodity prices had started to rise.

Major processors such as Wiseman increased payments per litre

to the farmers who supply them with milk directly

It's a great shame that supermarkets don't value our farmers

and that's why politicians should step in and regulate.

One of the good news stories on the near horizon

is that the government are doing just that

and the Grocery Code Adjudicator will be on the statue book this year

and it must have the teeth to make sure the supermarkets

and the processors are not allowed to get away with this in the future.

The Grocery Adjudicator, a supermarket watchdog,

will address the market dominance of the big retailers

and ensure suppliers are treated fairly and lawfully.

By autumn pressure from farmers appeared to be getting results.

Many supermarkets have raised the milk prices

they pay to their dedicated pools of dairy farmers.

But Neil claims that the rises simply reinstate prices

farmers were paid before the price cuts in spring.

Every concession has been fought for by farmers like Neil

but he fears that rising feed costs will put dairy farmers under huge pressure over the winter

and could still drive them out of business.

If we don't start to safeguard our domestic dairy industry,

we are going to have to throw ourselves upon the global market

and we will have no dairy farmers left in the UK.

We'll import milk, cheese, yoghurt whatever it is

and we'll have to hope that that milk is coming from farms

that adhere to the same sort of welfare and quality standards

that we are required to in the UK.

We might be able to get food cheaper from overseas

but we really don't know what we're eating or where it came from

and certainly we don't know how it was produced.

Now, when you're out doing your shopping,

have you ever noticed how some things have more packaging around them

compared to what's actually inside?

Over a third of the packaging found in a typical shopping basket

can't be recycled.

Much of the food we buy has layers of wrapping that go straight in the bin.

So could manufacturers improve on this?

And in the process make the size of the actual contents obvious at a glance?

I'm meeting Mark Shayler who has 18 years of design experience

in improving product packaging.

I have to tell you, as a consumer,

I get so frustrated by layer after layer after layer of paper.

Particularly when you buy something in a cardboard box.

It seems to be this size and the box is this size.

-So you must come across that all the time.

-All the time.

We see it as an issue that is absolutely huge

and in reality we've got a lot better at it

but there's still some things to do.

If I'm being really honest,

there are times if I'm buying something for somebody else

and I think, "Gosh, that looks really good in all that packaging,"

so I'm a bit of a sucker for it sometimes.

We talk about different occasions, different opening occasions

and Apple have made a whole science of the seven-second reveal of the iPhone.

When you pull the box apart there's a little bit of suction

and that's part of the pleasure of the product

but for everyday products, maybe we're not really interested

in the seven-second reveal when we just want to open a can of sardines.

You can only talk about it for so long. We've got to look at out shopping.

This is going to be a good lesson for me in packaging.

We've got a box of chocolate treats here.

-Open the clip and straightaway...

-Oh, it's only half full.

Well, you're managing disappointment there, aren't you? That's not really good enough.

We can drop the size of this appropriately to the weight of the product.

The irony of course is they taste great.

And they smell good too.

When we contacted Gu

they said that their packaging gives a clear indication of the weight of the product

and they pride themselves on the honesty and integrity

of their ingredients and manufacturing process.

-So what's next?

-Two different products.

Both exactly the same.

Yeah, you'd say they were exactly the same.

When you look really closely, this one's only got 750ml in,

whereas this one has got a litre in.

Oh, and actually now that I look at it further, this one seems slightly narrower.

There's quite a difference then between those.

Absolutely but there's nothing legally wrong

because they explained how much is in there.

Both great products, all of that kind of stuff

but, at first look you think, hang on a minute.

-Value wise.

-They're both the same.

Innocent told us that they don't agree that a consumer

might mistake the size of the carton at a glance for a litre one

because their 750ml carton is significantly narrower

and the height must then remain the same to ensure that the carton can fit on retailer shelves

which are all set to fit one-litre cartons.

They also make sure the front clearly tells the consumer

exactly the size they are choosing.

Other examples. This is a really interesting one.

I was struck by the fact that the bag felt half full.

When you open them up, straightaway.

Oh, my goodness, it's, like, a third full.

-Yeah, absolutely.

-That is ridiculous.

And, interestingly, it's an aluminium foil as well.

It's used to stop sunlight coming through which then stops

-a product becoming rancid.

-Yeah, it's good for preservation.

It's great but you don't need it on the outer, because inside

you've then got five packs that are all aluminium foiled anyway.

I'm going to open this one. What I do get in my yoghurty thing

is a packet that's barely a third full of anything.

Absolutely and I can't see a reason for it.

Now are there any legal rules and regulations

about maybe misleading in terms of the yoghurty sweets or any of it?

Every single one has labelled correctly.

So even the yoghurt ones it says 5 x 25 grams, however,

it's written really small, very near the seal,

it's not the thing that leaps out at you.

The thing that leaps out at you is the brand.

And the size of the bag.

-Exactly, yeah.

-So that the other message.

If you want to shop really wisely, you've got to read the labels carefully.

But the labels could be much easier to read.

Now that's another story.

The manufacturers of Yu Fruit told us that the description of the contents

is clear and easy for a consumer to locate.

They also said that all of their products are designed

for snacking and eating on the go - hence the need to use

aluminium foil for each individual pack.

They said that if they could use alternative packaging

without compromising on quality they would certainly do so.

And this is something they will continuously evaluate.

Now over-sized packaging is one thing

but what if the packet stays the same but the contents shrink?

And then if the price stays the same, that's a shocker.

In March 2012, Which? reported that over the last year

certain products had reduced in size.

Here are some examples. We've got Branston Pickle.

Now this was a 405g jar before, it's now 360g.

That's a 45g reduction and it's on sale for exactly the same price.

That's 12% less for the same price.

So does the new bottle look noticeably smaller?

In terms of size? No. They look relatively similar.

Slight packaging difference but apart from that I don't see much.

Different calorie count but I can't see what...

I can't see any difference.

The size?

Oh, yeah - that one is a little bit smaller 360g as opposed to 405g.

That's inflation, isn't it? That's pulling the wool over people's eyes.

Cheeky!

And they found products that shrank where the price had gone up.

Here's another example of Birds Eye Crispy Chicken.

This was 360g, it's now down to 340g.

It was on special offer for £2, now at this smaller weight

it's on sale for £3.85 so we got 20g less for nearly £1.85 more.

In fact, the only thing that hadn't changed was the size of the box.

I think if they decrease the size

and keep the box the same size then that's pretty deceptive actually.

Part of the reason I don't buy things like this is because I can't see

what the size is so I would rather buy something where I see it clearly.

I think that's a little bit out of order.

People go for their brand because they remember the picture and stuff

and they don't necessarily look at the grams and such.

It's not value for money especially if prices continue to go up as well.

Blackcurrant jam, used to be a 454g jar, it's now 400g jar.

That's an eighth smaller and it's exactly the same price,

so you're paying the same money for a jar that's 54g less in weight.

So we asked the food manufacturers to comment.

Streamline said that it was part of a re-design and re-launch strategy

and an alternative to a price increase

in the face of huge increase in raw material costs.

They also said that, historically, jams were sold in pound jars, 454g,

however many consumers felt these were too large.

Birds Eye said that they are facing steep rises in commodity prices

and have made a small reduction in the weight

of their Crispy Chicken in order to keep prices low.

Whilst it's retailers that set prices in store,

they are working closely with them to devise promotions

that will benefit their consumers and offer value for money.

Branston Pickle told us they would prefer not to comment.

Now, here's a question.

Are we shoppers always the free agents we think we are?

Do supermarkets encourage us to spend

by diverting our attention in subtle ways that we may not notice?

Observing shoppers behaviour is now a science

and Philip Adcock has spent 20 years

analysing the habits of consumers in 17 different countries.

Once in a supermarket people take in

and act on information at a subconscious level.

The experience of shopping in a supermarket has become quite simply overwhelming.

We have 50,000 products to choose from

and our brains aren't wired to make those sorts of decisions.

So that leads to what we term brain overload.

We make irrational guesses instead of sensible purchasing decisions.

We asked Philip to carry out a little experiment for us

up in Scarborough in North Yorkshire.

We invited a local resident, Sarah Berry who works part time

and has three children, to let us follow her during a family shop.

I probably go to the supermarket about two or three times a week.

I spend £80-100 on a bigger shop

but maybe a couple of times a week it'll be more like £30-40.

What we're going to do today is ask you to take part in an experiment.

I'm going to ask you to wear these glasses and go round and do your normal shopping.

-What we're looking for is to see exactly what you look at when you're shopping in this store.

-OK.

By using these intriguing glasses to track eye movements,

Philip and his team can see what really influences Sarah's purchases.

Off you go, have a normal shop.

-OK, thank you, see you later.

-See you later.

Near the entrance is a wide aisle which encourages the shopper to

slow down, acclimatize and let our eyes adjust to the light.

A common tactic is to place the first special offer right in the middle of this zone.

And Sarah responds.

More and more purchasing gets done as what we call single scripted behaviour.

That's acting on auto pilot. Like driving a car, shaking hands.

You have products that you take an interest in and buy.

You actually put stuff in the trolley

with no mental recollection of doing it. It's habit.

Fruit and veg are often located quite near the entrance

because gives a fresh healthy feel-good impression.

Then Sarah sweeps down the chiller section where there's a huge array of yoghurts.

Sometimes you get a bit, "Oh, which one?" when there are so many to choose from

and that's when sometimes you do just grab what's in front of you

cos you're not always shopping without the children.

So that made it a bit easier and maybe looked a bit longer than I would have done normally.

The more she shops, the further round the store she goes,

the more she'll get into automatic shopping mode,

and the more things she'll buy irrationally.

She'll start responding to brand names, brand logos, special offers.

Supermarkets typically have what's known as a power aisle

which is the busiest along the central spine of the store.

The aisles which branch off have special offer displays

located at the ends.

These signal a really important offer making a shopper stop and look.

Brands will pay extra to secure a place for their products

in this prominent location. They're called gondola ends.

What people tend to do is you walk down the main aisle

and look into the other isles, trying to spot

something of interest or a brand they recognise that they need.

They'll go down that isle or just ignore it and walk on.

There's an old fashioned myth that we blindly go up and down every isle in the supermarket. We don't.

We pick the ones we need to go up and down and that's it.

Products with high profit margins tend to be placed at eye level

which immediately attracts the shopper.

Often basic ranges are less conveniently located.

Shoppers always tend to buy more than they bargain for.

They'll always say they don't but they do.

They make impulse purchases.

We're all tempted by the bar of chocolate the cream cake, the bottle of wine

and our brain just takes over and gives us an emotional fix.

After this 40 minutes of shopping around a supermarket, "Oh, I'll have a glass of wine with my partner."

I recognise that.

All that's left now is for Sarah to find out how much she's spent.

£43.79

Did you buy a few things on the spur of the moment?

Yeah, I always do. Those big red signs with Special Offer.

What happens now is we take this footage away and analyse it frame by frame.

Looking at every single time that crosshair stops on what she was looking at.

So will Philip's analysis of Sarah's shopping trip show us

how much we're influenced by supermarket tricks of the trade?

We'll find out the results shortly.

As you know, sometimes it's hard to work out the best buy

when it comes to comparing similar products on supermarket shelves.

Take fruit and veg for example.

Are we better buying loose or pre-packaged?

Which is better value?

I'd normally go and get them loose and pick the fruit I want.

If possible, I'd buy them loose.

You can often find that bagged ones are cheaper.

Hmm, 50-50, I think.

I quite like buying it loose. It feels more real to me.

And are supermarkets really helping us to make the right choice?

In 2012 Which? carried out a survey of supermarkets across the UK

and found evidence of inconsistent pricing

in all the supermarkets they reviewed.

What we found quite simply

is that shoppers are completely baffled

and bewildered by the mess of pricing

that you find in the supermarket.

Very often in the fruit and veg department for example

you'll see products priced by pound, by kilogram,

products priced individually. You just can't compare to them.

You can't work out, unless you're a rocket scientist with a computer,

exactly what you're buying and whether you're getting right deal from the right product.

For instance if you're buying, say, five loose bananas,

it may be priced by banana, by kilo or by bag.

But the comparisons aren't always easy to make

and that's the quandary of unit pricing.

Today, we're going to carry out a little shopping experiment.

We're going to see how difficult it is for some shoppers

to compare fruit and vegetables which are pre-packed

with fruit and vegetables which are sold loose.

To tackle this unit pricing challenge, we've chosen a crack team of shoppers.

There's a mathematician, PhD student Tom.

Barbara is a grandmother with bags of experience.

And a number-crunching accountant, Paul.

I'm meeting them for a coffee to explain their task.

They're going to buy one fruit and one veg each.

And by comparing like for like choose the best value on the shelf.

Barbara, in your case, you're looking for red onions and bananas.

Tom is looking for Bramley apples and carrots.

And then Paul is looking for peppers and also plums.

And to use whatever weighing tools

but no calculators so you've got to use the old brainbox.

Absolutely.

Bit concerned that I can't use my calculator but I'll give it a go.

The unit pricing survey covered all major supermarkets chains

but we're heading for the biggest, Tesco,

just across the road from the cafe.

Good shopping and I'm about to time your ten minutes as from now.

By law, retailers have to display both the selling price

and the cost per unit such as per 100g or per individual item.

The main point is that it should be unambiguous,

easily identifiable and clearly legible.

Ten minutes later, the trio returns.

They bought six items and had to make calculations

or weigh products to make comparisons in all cases.

We'll review three of their purchases.

Paul, the accountant, of course. Let's look at the peppers.

There was a choice of loose, packet of four or packet of three so there was some mental arithmetic.

The loose peppers were 80p each.

The pack of three at £1.65 works out at 55p a pepper.

But the bag of four at £2 works out cheapest - that's 50p each.

What's interesting, if you'd been buying the four loose,

it would have been £3.20. That's quite a difference in price.

So a saving of £1.20 -

as long as you're good at doing sums in your head!

So, how was it then, Barbara?

It was fine but it took a little longer

than I would normally spend buying two items.

Life's too short, to be honest.

-Do you think in kilos or pounds?

-Pounds.

To compare loose red onions with bagged,

Barbara had to find the supermarket scales.

At 85p a kilo, loose onions are a better buy than the bagged ones

which at £1.20 a bag works out at £1.71 a kilo.

And better value than a special offer of two bags for £2.

That's still £1.43 a kilo.

I mean, I'm astounded by that.

Particularity as this is such a basic food.

I would think most people would go and buy onions on a regular basis

and if we all spent the time on the scales trying to weigh out our food,

there would be a massive queue of people

just putting all their items on the scales trying to work out best value.

Well, Tom, being the age you are, you would definitely think in kilos.

Yes, yes. I had to do a few hard sums.

I think they purposefully make it confusing with the packaged things

by having an unusual weight like 1.2kg rather than 1kg

so you can't work out the price per weight very easily.

A 1.2kg bag of carrots cost a pound

which a mathematician like Tom could work out to be 83p a kilo.

And the loose carrots were 78p a kilo - so Tom chose the best value.

-So you got the cheapest.

-Yeah, it wasn't straightforward to work out, I mean,

I'm doing a maths PhD, so my mental arithmetic's all right

but you don't have time to do that kind of thing in the supermarket.

Our crack team got it right but would the average shopper

bother to spend the time on the weighing and the mental arithmetic?

I have to say I am very impressed. Our shoppers did extremely well.

They all managed to buy the cheapest.

And I think you'll agree that some of the results are pretty staggering.

The only thing I would say is it took them just under seven minutes

to buy just two items in the fruit and veg department.

So come on, supermarkets, sort it out.

People are telling us at Which? that what they want

is simply to have the stress and the hassle

and the sheer bewilderment of pricing removed.

They want it to be simple easy and quick so that

when you're in the supermarket with the kids

under the pressure of time

you don't have to have a calculator and a database of prices

to work out whether you're getting the right deal or not.

We asked Tesco to comment. They said it's an industry-wide issue,

not unique to Tesco,

and referred us to the British Retail Consortium statement

that, "Official figures have recently shown

"the price of food is helping keep overall inflation down,

"with competition between the supermarkets playing a big part.

"Customers aren't fools and have no difficulty finding best value."

"The law gives shops the option of selling by weight

"or by unit for products such as pre-packed fruit and vegetables.

"With some things - eggs, apples, bananas -

"how many they're getting matters more to customers than the overall weight."

Now, supermarkets beware,

if shoppers get fed up of having to weigh and compare the options to get the best value,

they could end up going to the fruit and veg market

where there's always a person on hand to weigh your purchases for you.

Earlier, Sarah Berry took part in a unique shopping experiment

under the close scrutiny of psychologist Philip Adcock.

He recorded her eye moments to see what influenced her shopping behaviour.

Now Sarah's been invited to her own premiere in London's West End.

I have to tell you for nothing, I've been many things in my time

but an usherette at cinema I have not. However, all in a good cause

because Sarah, our lovely shopper, is here. Some popcorn for you.

-Thank you.

-Philip, our shopping behaviour expert, one for you as well.

Anyway, it's great to see you.

So, the famous glasses.

What do you learn by watching somebody through these glasses?

The first thing is the brain can only process 5% of the information it get from the eyes.

So, first of all, we can look at all the stuff it's getting that it just can't cope with.

-Give me an example.

-In terms of special offers,

we see a special offer in the supermarket every one and a half seconds.

You can't do the maths to work out that special offer that quick,

so we have to understand where people look,

what is the information that they can process,

and what is superfluous and they can't cope with.

And do you find that that's the norm for the average shopper?

That we just can't cope with it all,

the brain can't take it all in, so we just make snap decisions.

That's the human race.

Our brains are full so we're trying to make all these decisions in the 21st century.

It's taken us 600 million years to evolve,

and we've created the supermarket in 120 years.

We haven't yet evolved to shop in a supermarket.

Sarah, are you quite irrational when it comes to shopping or are you quite planned?

Hmm, I try to be planned but I always forget the list that I make

so you have a plan of the next few days of what meals are going to be.

Do you have to watch the pennies? What's your budget like?

Yeah, well, tricky. We don't really have a budget.

Maybe we should do.

So now you've selected some clips, have you?

We've got some clips of some interesting behaviour,

some good ways of looking at your decision making processes

and what actually attracts your attention in the supermarket.

I can't wait.

So here we are, in we go into the shop.

It's quite a big open area.

This is what we call the deceleration zone.

and it slows you down to get you into a shopping mood.

Heading towards the offer. As we were setting up,

she was looking at this offer a number of times

and had already conditioned herself to buy this offer.

That's the one I remembered.

Your eye is never still. It moves around in a series of jerky movements,

which are called fixations each time it stops.

Sarah's already on the "Save 20p" bit.

Yeah, the first thing that has attracted her was the big "Save 20p" sign.

And you can see by how many times the eye's moving around,

focusing on different things, this is very mentally taxing.

And here we are looking at more vegetables.

You see the ones you want and, unfortunately, there's only one left in the box.

We don't like buying the last ones, consumers in this country,

so you then decide to leave that one. Everybody else has left it.

So now we're leaving the produce section

and looking at the yoghurts and chilled deserts.

What's on special offer and what isn't?

When you've got such a choice in front of you

it's very hard to make rational decisions,

so by using the price tickets to reduce that choice,

helps you to limit what you have to mentally consider at that moment.

Another product catches your eye.

Start with own label, there you are,

then you spot the branded one is actually better value.

I can't remember, was it bigger?

Bigger for less money, I think. 69 versus 85.

Yeah, cos you wouldn't expect the branded stuff to be less

because there was no offer on there either. I don't think.

Then you spot another branded one with an offer,

and, very cleverly you check for a reference price

so £1.19 compared to what?

See if you look.

-Whoa, that was a good one.

-Didn't even know I did that.

Much of what we do in the supermarket, because we're at the mental limit,

we don't remember literally seconds later.

And here's a grab and go purchase coming up, look, it goes

straight in the basket and you turn away, you see another temptation.

A massive display of promoted products,

10, 12, 14 different promotions on the back of that fixture.

Your brain now is overloaded.

You're trying to work out the good deals, the products you need, the products you like,

the better value, the not so good value, but you can and you're doing this.

Are you quite happy with what you bought?

This is just quite typical that I've got a lot of things there that

I didn't go in for

but I've got everything that I needed for the next few days so...

How do you think she did, Philip?

That was advanced shopping.

You checked out the deals, if they didn't appeal, you ignored them,

you weren't duped in any way.

Typically, 60% of supermarket purchases are what we call grab and go.

You don't check the price or the value, you just walk in,

you don't have to think about it.

That's what most supermarket shopping is.

Sarah - only 26% of her purchases were like that

but still 26% of purchases were.

We all want to become better shoppers and obviously save money

and not be ripped off,

so what are your tips to help us be a better shopper?

Typically, an adult will spend £150,000 in their lifetimes in supermarkets.

If you can save 10%, that's £15,000, so go about it as a process.

Have a list, a great shopping list they'll give you,

it's the till roll from last week.

It'll tell you what cost more last week, what's gone up this week. What's on offer this week.

Another one is take your time.

We all say we haven't got any time for this, time for that,

but we spend three minutes in the coffee shop waiting for the skinny latte to be made.

Spend it in the supermarket and save 10, 15, 25%.

Another tip is don't ever go shopping in a supermarket when you're hungry.

Try and have something before you go in

and if, after 20 minutes, you start to flag, start to get tired,

you still got 25,000 square foot of store to shop, leave,

put some stuff in the car, have something to eat outside and come back in.

The convenience of supermarket shopping -

almost everything you need under one roof - all of that is clear.

But don't be lulled into thinking that all these retail giants

have the consumer's interest at heart.

Do try to resist that impulse to just grab and go.

Think about it and check the offer

before you hand over your hard-earned cash.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd