At a store near my house, pitted prunes sell for $5 a pound, and dried plums sell for $12 a pound. Why? By definition, a prune and a dried plum are the same thing; however, a lot of people don’t know that. Many people think that a prune is a type of fruit, and that a dried prune is a fresh prune that has been dried, like a dried apple is a fresh apple that has been dried. Some people are willing to pay a lot more for a bag of dried plums than a bag of prunes. I suspect the reason that people are willing to pay more for dried plums than prunes is that ‘dried plum’ sounds nicer than ‘prune.’ The word ‘prune’ has an unpleasant sound to it. As silly as that sounds, I think that may actually be the reason. The price difference has nothing to do with where the prunes come from. Nearly all of the plums grown in the U.S. come from California’s Central Valley.

There is no difference between dried plums and prunes. They are the same thing. By definition, a prune is a dried plum. However, prunes cost more, and sometimes a lot more, when they are called ‘dried plums.’ At the Safeway store in north Berkeley, dried plums cost almost twice as much as prunes of the same size and type. Prunes cost $3.00 a pound, but dried plums cost $5.00 a pound.  Why are dried plums so much more expensive than prunes? That is easy to answer. People are willing to pay more for prunes when they are called ‘dried plums.’ Consumer testing has shown that people do not like the sound of the word ‘prune.’ People associate the word ‘prune’ with something that is dark, old, and wrinkled. Prune companies are acting rationally. Suppose you owned a prune company and you knew you could get $3 a pound for your ‘prunes’ or $5 a pound for your ‘dried plums.’ What would you call them? There are a lot of other supermarket products like this. For example hazelnuts and filberts are the same thing, but in California, hazelnuts cost more than filberts, whereas in southern states, filberts cost more than hazelnuts.