FAIR’S FAIR
In fairness, Mr. Tidbit must acknowledge that the presence of the costlier cranberries in the new cereal is surely a factor in the higher price. To assess how much of the extra 93 cents (for 13.5 ounces of cereal) is cranberry-related, he bought the 18.7-ounce box of Raisin Bran and the 13.5-ounce box of Raisin Bran with cranberries, and he weighed the raisins and cranberries on his kitchen scale.
The 18.7-ounce box of regular Kellogg’s Raisin Bran contained 5.3 ounces of raisins. (So the hypothetical 13.5-ounce box of regular raisin bran would contain 3.8 ounces of raisins.) The 13.5-ounce box of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran with Cranberries contained 1.5 ounces of raisins and 1.8 ounces of cranberries, for a total of only 3.3 ounces.
At the discount store where Mr. Tidbit purchased the cereals, a 10-ounce bag of Sun-Maid raisins was $2.74 (27.4 cents per ounce), and a 10-ounce bag of Ocean Spray Craisins was $2.99 (29.9 cents per ounce). At those prices, the raisins in the 13.5-ounce hypothetical box of regular raisin bran would cost $1.04. The raisins and cranberries in the with-cranberries box would cost a total of 95 cents. So — because the total amount of fruit is smaller, even if some of it is cranberries — the fruit in the with-cranberries box costs 9 cents less than the raisins in the same amount of just-raisins cereal.
Summing up: The box of the new cereal costs 93 cents more than the regular cereal — and it contains 9 cents’ worth less fruit.
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