I admit I may be a poor example as I rarely use recipes other than as starting off points.
But your grandmother’s recipe called for a standard sized jar of commercially produced spaghetti sauce?!
All I knew from my grandmother’s cooking was “a pinch” or “a handful” or “just enough” or “some” or maybe “to taste” or “one large or two small” … a jar or can of something? I think of those as 60s recipes along with using Jello and Dreamwhip, recipes created by the marketing departments of Big Food Inc to get people using more “convenience products” … the canned goods were used as adaptations to the actual “5 medium chopped tomatoes more or less” in a least poor fit manner.
Yes, almost always portion sizes are too large. I think the cost of food is a small part of a restaurant’s budget. There is wonderful middle east restaurant my wife and I love. The last time we went, we got some appetizers (love those middle-eastern appetizers) and split a plate of their signature baked lamb. Even though we were splitting one portion, we still got them to wrap up the leftovers and had an admittedly meager lunch from it the next day.
But manufacturers have pulled these hidden price rises for as long as I can remember. A real pain in the butt, but the practice goes back at least 70 years in my memory. The first one I noticed was in packaged candy bars. And sometimes they do it without changing the box size. There is a kind of cereal I buy that is scarcely 2/3 full.
My favorite is the 6 cups of ice cream in “half gallon” ice cream cartons. Anyone wanting to argue they weren’t hoping the customer wasn’t aware of the new reduced amount?
Reminds me of El Pollo Loco reducing their tortilla count to two or airlines charging for carryons because of the financial crisis of paying for fuel. Let’s see, that was just before the housing crisis so 2007 maybe? Just to get through the temporary crisis you understand. Seven years later and they’re permanent fixtures now like people said they would be.
ETA: This gives the timeline for reduction in ice cream size.
That can end up to be a pretty pricey small portion. Whenever I hit Golden Corral, it take my son. He can eat his weight in meat, so we end up getting our money’s worth.
Especially for things where it doesn’t make sense to take leftovers home. Really, I don’t want a half-pound burger! I’d even pay a bit more per unit for an amount of food that I am actually likely to eat. It might even lead me to eat lunch out once in a while instead of brown-bagging almost all of the time.
And while you’re at it, can you cut down your salt by about 2/3?
Years ago, I tried a couple of times to order a combo meal at a drive-through and told them to ‘hold the fries’. I didn’t want them; just the burger and a drink. They said they couldn’t do that.
Why would you order a combo when you don’t want a combo? Was it something weird where the burger was only available as one? ETA: Or was the combo price less than the burger and the drink separately?
A gallon, a pound, and a dozen are defined standards. A “can” is not. My MIL’s pumpkin pie recipe calls for a 1# can of pumpkin, because Libby’s used to package it that way. Now it’s 14.5 oz across the board. Fortunately, it still works in the pie, but it’s maddening.
A can of wet dog food used to be a pound. Now it’s 13.5 oz. A can of tuna used to be 6.5 oz, then 6.3 oz, then 6, then 5.5, and I think it’s down to 5oz now, tho I’m not sure because I quit buying canned tuna. A bottle of shampoo used to be 24 oz, then 22.5, then 18. Similar things happened to laundry detergent, jam, cereal (yeah, I know, by weight, not volume, but the weight has gone down for the same price), pasta (the one pound box of angel hair has been replaced with 12 oz) and on and on. It’s maddening, but what can you do? Obviously the majority of shoppers don’t notice or don’t care.
One of the major benefits of my local cafeteria is the portion size. We get it take out and always get two meals from one dinner. Its about $12 with tax. So $6 a meal. Pretty good value.
We would stop going if they cut the portion size. $12 for one meal isn’t acceptable. I just won’t pay that much. We reserve expensive meals for special occasions.
Not quite sure I get your comment. Do you believe that it is not true that some products are size sensitive and some are price sensitive to most consumers?
Let’s even take the canned pumpkin example: since a large number, if not most consumers, are buying canned pumpkin to make pumpkin pie the producers will not change its package amount to a portion that does not work for a standard recipe, but they will note that consumers will buy a 14.5 oz can priced less that works in the recipe more commonly than a 16 oz can priced higher or even as often if priced the same. Given that they’d be silly to package it in 16 oz cans.
But yeah, I buy a package of bacon and at most look at the price per unit weight and the amount of fat (or per the request of the bacon eater in the house was for center cut and now turkey bacon) … the size of the package is not too important to me. Mayo - one jar or plastic bottle seems to last forever so smaller is fine. Jam too. Tuna may be based on what consumers want - 6.5 is a lot for a single serving which is perhaps how it is consumed more often now than making a bunch “for the kids.” Detergent is per number of washes not volume and I prefer the more concentrated forms. Pasta? I see all sorts of sizes on the shelf now, from smaller to huge - nice to get a package the size I will actually use that night rather than be forced into the 1 pound size only.
Real food costs have been decreasing for decades, since WW2, btw.
I know that sometimes I do this out of sheer laziness. To a lazy person like me, “Gimme the number 1, but leave out the fries” seems easier to say than, “Gimme the Big Sloppy Burger and a medium Coke.” Especially since they’re gonna ask me if I want the combo anyway.
For me, I don’t want the drink. The drink is always extraneous to me. Fries are essential though.
Actually, food cost is pretty much tied for #1 as the largest part of a restaurant’s budget. When I ran a Jack in the Box, it was expected that our food cost and our labor/payroll would each account for about 1/3rd of our total expenses, with utilities, facility maintenance, rent, marketing, shrink, taxes/municipal fees, and all the rest taking up the other third, and, at the end of the day, about 1-3% of the total gross left as profit.
I noticed this too. I used to like a brand of chocolate almonds. They took them off the shelf a couple of years ago, and eventually came back with much smaller bags. For the same price of course.
This is not my experience, nor the experience of those who have actually made studies of the subject. Restaurant meals have actually gotten larger, much larger, over the decades. It really is not possible to completely finish dinners in most restaurants, and my wife and I feel perfectly satisfied when we split one dinner. Most restaurants will do this, even putting the half dinners on separate plates. In fact you usually end up with two 5/8 dinners that way instead of 1/2 dinners. Then leave a large tip.
Why have portions gotten larger? Some decades ago, most restaurants were family operations. It probably employed family members who had no formal wages and may even have owned the building or paid cheap rent. The major expense was the cost of the food. Today, Rents and property prices are high. Rent or interest, corporate profits, insurance, and payroll are major expenses. Food is cheap. Yes, food is cheap in the United States. So if food is cheap and competition is fierce, it is logical to compete by piling on the food.
People curse when they see food prices in the supermarket, but willingly pay mortgage or rent which gouges them for three times what they spend on food without a wimper.
Why would you order a combo when you don’t want a combo? Was it something weird where the burger was only available as one? ETA: Or was the combo price less than the burger and the drink separately?