I considered posting this in Cafe Society, but since it could apply to almost anything, here it is.
Anyway, I opened a box of Zesta saltines last night, and while the box was the same size as it’s always been, the cracker sleeves were about an inch shorter.
Yeah, the last box of saltines we opened, the stacks were down at least an inch. I’d say closer to 2.
i saw come cereal where the new boxes proudly announced, “Now 15% more!” The thing is, the boxes were beside the old ones, which had the same amount but no ‘15% more’ thing. What they were doing was prepping the consumers for Shrinkflation. Get them used to the current size as a ‘special’ large size, then later you back to ‘regular’, which is actually smaller than the original.
I couldn’t say how much it has shrunk, but: I use my mother’s recipe for meatloaf which includes one can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup and the resulting meatloaf is definitely less red than it was when I was growing up.
Campbell’s cream soups have been reformulated in recent years, and they make my stomach gurgle in unpleasant ways. A woman to whom I mentioned this said, “That’s because it isn’t food any more.”
I buy other brands if I need a canned cream soup.
Ice cream is yet another example of shrinkflation, and one butcher shop in my area sells 3-packs of sausages and brats at the same price that they used to charge for 4-packs.
I recently noticed that Hagen-Dazs containers that used to hold one pint of ice cream now hold only 14 ounces.
They may hold a pint by volume, and 14 ounces by weight.
I have also noticed that Marcal toilet paper, which I use, has “loosened” their rolls. They’re about the same size, but not wound as tightly so they don’t last anywhere near as long.
The number of tissues in a box of Kleenex brand nose-honking tissue has declined a bunch over the years. Yes, they have various sizes and shapes of box and various gradations of paper. But for same-box & same-tissue product, the sheet count is down a LOT.
One of the things I started doing years ago when I started working on my weight was using Arnold’s Sandwich Thins instead of loaf bread. They originally were sold in packs of eight, but now they are sold in packs of six. No decrease in the price, of course.
Too many to list for people who’ve been paying attention over the years. Frozen pizzas, “XXL” Burritos, “Family Size!” anything. What happened to “Bath Size” bar soap? Just these twee things now.
One of the more aggravating is simply the widely varying weights of bagged bean coffee. Not just more of the twee 14oz “pound”, stuff is all over the map from 11.xxx ounces, 12 something, etc.
I’m not old enough to remember, though Sugar was long sold in 5lb bags. I think this shifted to 4lb bags in the 1970s. I’ve noticed Flour making some unwanted price excursions in recent years, but still holding on to the 5lb bag size. Fertilizer was long sold in 50lb sacks, then at the retail level at least shifted to 40lb sacks. A few years ago I saw some 10-10-10 at the local hardware store “on sale”, not too bad a price I thought. Got it home and they didn’t look right somehow. Sure enough - the 50lb bags of fertilizer now weigh 35.
Lawn. Kids. Stay Off!!
Sorry, the labeling says 14 FL OZ (cite), which is a volumetric property (0.875 pint). Since it’s ice cream (less dense than water), it’s also going to weigh less than 14 ounces (0.875 lbm).
I haven’t been able to find an actual half gallon of ice cream for years, ever since the major label brands shrank their “half gallon” units to 56 oz (some have even gone down to 48 oz), and the store brands decided to follow suit (damn their fucking eyes).
Five-pound bags of flour have been replaced by four-pound bags; a standard “quart” jar of mayonnaise has been re-standardized to 30 ounces; you have to search among 12-ounce packages of bacon to find a one-pound package; orange juice is now mostly 56-ounce “half-gallons” (I can find full half-gallon bottles of the store brand*); and I can’t remember the last time I was able to buy a dozen Jumbo eggs (which is the right size for an egg to be).
*(but it’s virtually impossible to find any with a discernible amount of pulp, even if it’s not labeled “pulp-free.” People who don’t want pulp in their orange juice don’t deserve orange juice. They can fucking drink Tang, as far as I’m concerned. But that’s a rant for another thread.
In the metric world - we lost the half litre of milk (500 ml) container some time ago - now it’s 475 ml. Crackers have gone from 225 to 200 grams, and some are now 175 grams. More ice cream is 1.5 litres - down from 2 litres. And the 5 sausages in a package rather than 6.
Blue Bell, a brand available in some areas of the Midwest (not mine, unfortunately) continues to sell in genuine half gallons.
I have abandoned Mountain House as a brand for freeze dried dinners. Their portions were always too small, and they recently shrank them by about a third (at the same price, of course). They now sell products that they claim to be “dinner” that contain 200 calories. That’s less than one typical energy bar.
The two markets for their product are backpackers and preppers - the latter because of the near-infinite shelf life. I’m wondering if this ridiculous shrinkage derives from the fact that they are focusing on the prepper market, and preppers never actually eat the product or pay much attention to what it actually contains.
Canned seltzers (La Croix, Bubbly, Polar, etc) have almost all gone from 12 cans per case to 8. The Aldi house brand and another local store brand (Signature Select at Jewel) are the only ones with 12 pack cases anymore.
I’d just be glad to see the major soda companies bring back 12 floz plastic bottles. They upsized to 16 for most of their flavors a few years ago and have not switched back down yet.
Yes, yes, I know, some flavors are now, or have been all along, available as 12s. But not the couple that interest me.
Clean Shower daily shower cleaner “value refill size” used to be 64 oz, twice the size of the standard spray bottle, for less than twice the price. Then they shrunk it to 60 oz. The bottle remained the same size, physically, they just put less in it and redesigned it to be opaque so you can’t see that it’s not completely full. The quantity printed on the label is the only indication that you’re getting less than you used to.
In an especially brazen example, Angel Soft has reduced their “mega roll” from 425 to 320 sheets per roll and reduced the width by 2/10ths an inch.
Yeah, I heard about that a few years ago when I complained about the situation. Unfortunately, my location near the Pacific Ocean renders the fact more pleasantly informative than personally useful.
As long as they’re saying that on a 10oz can they’re keeping up with the spirit of shrinkflation. Bravo for them!