In a 9.39 zł jar of pickles, less than half the weight is pickles
Guess how much of a 920 g jar of pickled cucumbers is actually cucumbers. Pick a number before you scroll on.
About 450 grams. Less than half.
We're not guessing. The Krakus jar costs 9.39 zł, and the shop lists it at 20.87 zł per kilo. That price only adds up if you count from the drained weight, meaning what's left once the brine goes down the sink. Counted from the number on the lid, it would be 10.21 zł. The gap between those two figures is exactly the brine.
The neighbouring shelves look the same:
- Krakus pickled cucumbers 920 g, 9.39 zł: about 450 g of cucumbers, 20.87 zł per kilo
- El Toro Rojo pitted black olives 340 g, 3.99 zł: about 163 g of olives, 24.48 zł per kilo
- Nasza Spiżarnia red kidney beans 400 g, 2.69 zł: 240 g of beans, 11.21 zł per kilo
- Nasza Spiżarnia chickpeas 540 g, 6.49 zł: 400 g of chickpeas, 16.23 zł per kilo
Notice that the ratios differ. In the chickpeas three quarters of the pack is food, in the olives it's under half. Two jars with the same number on the lid don't have to hold the same amount inside.
And to be straight about it, this isn't a trick by the shop. The brine is there so the product keeps, and the drained weight is a figure the producer has to declare. We checked it against products with nothing to drain: Mutti passata 700 g and tomato pulp 400 g have their price per kilo counted from the full pack weight, 14.27 and 8.23 zł. The brine doesn't quietly disappear, it simply isn't counted as food.
The takeaway for your next shop is short. On anything floating in brine, the number on the lid compares nothing. The price per kilo has already subtracted the water, and it tells you what the food on your plate really costs.
Snugmeal costs recipes the same way, from the weight that goes into the pot rather than the weight of the packaging.
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Data: prices and price-per-kilo read live from product pages on zakupy.biedronka.pl on 10 August 2026. Drained weights are derived from the price and the shop's own price per kilo, so we give them as approximate values. Our own calculations.