Del Monte ’10 Grapefruit’ Claim is the Pits

Ten is a nice round number. It’s a decade, a bill, a strike in bowling, and the best place to start a countdown. Make no bones about it, we like 10.

We also like fruit. Del Monte sells fruit and makes the labeling claim that there are 10 grapefruit in its 64-ounce container of Sun Fresh Red Grapefruit. That’s a grapefruit for every 6.4 ounces but more importantly it’s 10(!), our darling digit. There is one problem, though: The 10 grapefruit claim is misleading — at best. In fact, if we were to put it on an accuracy scale of 1 to 10, we’d have to give it a 4.

TINA.org took a trip to the store this week in an effort to follow up on a tip about the issue from a reader. We checked out with the 64-ounce Del Monte container and 10 grapefruit.

Back at the office, we emptied out the contents of the jar and got to work peeling and segmenting the individual grapefruit, which we then dropped into the empty Del Monte container. After packing down the flesh of the fourth fruit, we could add no more. Six unpeeled grapefruit stood idly by.

The results of our citrus test closely mirrored those of a reader who said the Del Monte container could only hold five grapefruit when she put it to the test.

“Stating with emphasis and even highlighting the ‘Contains 10 Grapefruit!’ definitely seems to me to be false and misleading,” the reader wrote in an email. “I should have been getting one jar free with each one that I purchased.”

While the pieces of grapefruit we deposited into the empty container were less meaty (but larger) than the “dismembraned” Del Monte pieces we took out, the original Del Monte jar held at least a couple cups of water with the grapefruit pieces. So the area gained by the larger “membraned” slices we put in was in effect offset by the removal of the liquid.

The reader said she bought Del Monte because she considered 10 grapefruit for the cost a “fair price.” Indeed, at the Connecticut grocery store where we made our purchases, the big container went for $7.99 while the loose grapefruit cost $1 each. Presumably, that’s a savings of a couple bucks — a nice markdown for one item on a grocery list.

But employ our citrus test and the savings turn into a loss.

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