Bitter taste: per-unit pricing of Australian supermarket fruit and veg leaving customers out of pocket

Under the existing rules, the major supermarkets can price fruit and vegetables per unit or per kilogram, whether they are packaged or loose. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

If you go into Woolworths to buy a bunch of small “kids’ bananas” you may not realise you’re paying double the price of the larger cavendish bananas right next to them.

At one Woolworths store, kids’ bananas have been sold in bunches of five and priced at $3.70 a bunch. At a glance, that seems more or less the same price as the loose cavendish bananas next to them on the shelf, priced at $3.50/kg.