The great mince myth? Coles, Woolworths, IGA and Aldi put to the test
Coles and Woolworths have come under the spotlight in recent weeks after multiple reports of customers being short changed when it came to their meat purchases.
In one concerning incident, a Coles customer was missing a whopping 225g of product from an 800g pack of lean beef mince.
Yahoo News Australia decided to put Australia's leading supermarkets to the test and weigh their standard packs of mince.
With Coles and Woolies' 1kg standard packs, and 500g packs from Aldi and IGA randomly selected from Sydney shelves, Yahoo's Caitie Browne got to work in deciphering how accurate the stated weights are.
In contrast to recent reports of underweight packets, all four came in overweight – and yes we accounted for the weight of the bowl before you ask.
Watch the video below
Coles
Stated weight: 1000g
Actual weight: 1006g - 100.6 per cent of stated weight
Woolworths
Stated weight: 1000g
Actual weight: 1003g - 100.3 per cent of stated weight
Aldi
Stated weight: 500g
Actual weight: 505g - 101 per cent of stated weight
IGA
Stated weight: 500g
Actual weight: 504g - 100.8 per cent of stated weight
It must be noted the sample size is small and undoubtedly packets will vary customer to customer.
All packets bar the one purchased in IGA also include the letter 'e' next to the weight.
This is the estimated sign, or the quantité estimée, used by countries in the European Union along with Australia and South Africa.
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Under a directive tabled by the International Organisation of Legal Metrology, packages between 500-1000g or millilitres are allowed to be 15g off their weight.
It is predominately used for "large-scale packaging plants where goods (eg breakfast cereals) are packed in the same quantity in batches of at least 100 packages", a spokesman for the National Measurement Institute previously told Yahoo News Australia.
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