Great idea! I'm afraid this would require at least a hundred employees to keep it current and useful, though. But, as a society, we definitely need this. Maybe if some government agency could back it up?
A ton of automated scraping is what it needs. Just the main UK supermarket chains would do, as it seems rather British in the choice of products even though there's no pricing actually shown.
The packages are changing so fast/often now that the shelf labels, online sizes and unit prices are often out of date. (Yes this is illegal, no nobody cares because it's £0.05 per product and they aren't doing it on purpose, they just don't make it a priority to have correct data).
Why would this benefit society? Price per unit is a trivial calculation, and most grocery stores already show it on the price tag.
Change in price over time is irrelevant for making a decision on whether or not something is worth the utility to price ratio now. If you are trying to time the market on junk food, then it is best to simply avoid it.
If, for some reason, you want to prevent Mondelez, or whichever other manufacturer, from earning more profit margin than it historically has, then you can look up their public financials most of the time:
To put factual and open information out there of how companies consistently just fuck with all of us and get away with every little thing they can because "profits!" and "their duty to investors!". e.g., the biggest lies our societies ever came up with
It is already open information that pretty much every seller of everything in the whole world tries to sell for as high of a price that they think can get.
And that purchasing power of currencies will go down over time.
Inflation existed for currencies that were on the gold standard too.
There was over a decade of QE which the rainmakers said would totally cause inflation. It didn’t.
Then there were supply side shocks which would definitely only cause transitory inflation. Also wrong.
Then we learned that sentiment causes it, and in the middle of terrible sentiment inflation went down.
Every complex problem has a simple, intuitive, easy to understand wrong answer. It is not an exaggeration to say that we do not know what causes inflation.
Good point, cogently reasoned and well stated. I especially like all the extraordinary evidence you provided for your claim of inflation from 2008-2019. Thank you for your contribution to the conversation.
Yes, GP is absolutely correct, all the people in the developing world who can't afford food are much healthier than those of us in the West, that live long enough and eat enough to deal with diseases of obesity that primarily affect one after 60 years of age. /s
What wonder, we've nearly conquered hunger if obesity has finally become more prevalent than starvation. I stand corrected. Nonetheless, starvation is more directly harmful/deadly. Obesity may kill you eventually, starvation will kill you in relatively short order.
Sure, but this thread is about the price of processed junk foods going up, including burgers, the sat fat laden mayo, and the bread enveloping it.
Price increases in healthy lentils, grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and healthier meats/poultry/fish is a concern for the global poor, but that is not what is talked about here.
> Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3%) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021
It’s easy to talk on a forum like this, where the median salary is massive compared to global/country median, that poor people shouldn’t be able to afford as much bad food. I think when you do so you’ve lost touch with the average person who is affected by things like shrinkflation.
You put /s, but that to an extent is sort of true. Diseases can't be cured as effectively where remedies or mitigations are too expensive, but the same first world locations where medicine and care is most available also have a litany of factors working against health.
I don't believe though that this is inevitable, and I hope that the first world will continue to improve its situation, and that less well-equipped areas will somehow avoid making the mistakes and leapfrog these uncomfortable middle periods. We see this for instance with the Industrial Revolution, where those that can be credited with facilitating it generally did pretty poorly for themselves, but those who industrialised later were substantially better off.
This has not worked out so well for other products. I live in Canada where cigarettes are enormously expensive due to taxes. Yet I know people who continue to smoke.
They're a lot poorer now, and so they have less money to spend on healthy food. So not only are they destroying their health by smoking, they're stuck eating crappy food as well.
I would not expect a higher price to stop every single person from buying the item immediately, especially not at at a price that is still obviously affordable.
It's not lipids you should be worried about, it's emulsifiers:
> celluloses, mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, modified starches, lecithins, carrageenans, phosphates, gums, and pectins. Some recent studies have indicated that emulsifiers can disturb gut bacteria and promote inflammation, potentially increasing susceptibility to cardiovascular issues.[0]
itd be interesting if tracking price is also included, although I can imagine that would be insanely difficult to keep track of for many reasons. I love this idea and hope it continues to grow.
I wonder why 0% items are shown on the big list at all. Like having a page of murderers with random innocent people with a text label under "not a murderer" :P
That would actually be beneficial to the innocent people if it gave them indemnity to prosecution! It's better to be cleared of a suspected crime than never prosecuted, in my opinion*.
* assuming the availability of pro bono legal aid as part of social welfare, a key part of any judicial system.
Thanks for your response. I think it might be a cultural thing; although I've never been charged for anything myself and so have limited understanding of what that might feel like, I would never judge someone negatively for a prosecution of any crime unless they were actually sentenced. Accusations of sex offences might admittedly be less comfortable to have been known for, but if you win your case there is no (legal) way for anyone to destroy your career; the worst I can imagine happening is that family members distance themselves from you - again, a cultural and personal response, not a legal one.
At least where I am (Britain), compensation will be given if the case was deemed to have been opened without sufficient evidence, which keeps the Crown fairly honest about what they prosecute. The police have a slightly less positive record for integrity, but pro bono support is available if you are actually charged. The result of this is that you should never be left financially worse for having been prosecuted if you subsequently win your case.
Finally, you never need to tell anyone that you've been charged. Of course, people can find out if they are keen enough to do so, but I probably pass on the street dozens of people who've been charged and acquitted for crimes, but I would never know and don't need to know.
It could be greater than 0% but less than 0.5%, ending up rounded down when displayed. The value getting checked might be against the raw value rather than the rounded one. Which, of course, is a bug.
This was my reaction too. I'd like to see which conglomerates and their divisions are the worst offenders. To break it down by brands alone makes it hard to identify who to name and shame.
I remember using this app[0] on my phone years ago, I just checked and they have an API. I'm not sure, but if I recall correctly this allowed you to scan barcodes of things and warn you if they are sub-brand or subsidiary of [evil company you wish to avoid].
Wasn't aware of that, also my use-case during the brief time I messed with it was trying to see how clever it was at identifying companies which use animal testing to develop their products.
I don't particularly care about shrinkflation. It gets calculated in the CPI (obviously) and most of the time it's goods that are unhealthy and overpriced to begin with.
I think it's just a wild theory at this stage, but some doctors are saying that eating unhealthy food leads to diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure
Sure, most of these items also cost next to nothing to make too and costs to actually make have barely risen (as a percentage of the item cost). So mostly it’s companies using inflation to squeeze more money out of people.
I agree that material cost is not a major component of the cost in a lot of these products.
It's marketing, distribution, etc. I don't think inflation is their excuse to squeeze more money out of you as it is to spend more in other areas of the business, as they should.
I have thought about developing this site for the last 3-4 years! This is exactly what it would have looked like. Thanks for saving me the trouble (if I ever had got round to it).
I would love to see something like this for tracking the sizes of the content catalogs of streaming services like Netflix, D+, and the other streaming services which go out of their way to create the illusion of sitting on top of an infinite content library. To see how those values change over time, while subscription fees remain the same (at best) would be quite revealing.
So is shrinkflation actually included in official inflation numbers? If all bars of soap in the country become smaller by 10%, does 'official' inflation number go up? Are the folks tracking official inflation index equipped to measure all the various products per kilo, etc?
In a high-inflation environment your profits are constantly shrinking. The problem also affects small and independent makers of all kinds.
If you are an indie maker and priced your product at $10 in 2020, you're now effectively making $8.38 USD[1]. Assuming inflation will remain elevated and you want to maintain the same margins, you need to either:
1. increase prices
2. reduce quality/quantity/features
3. reduce supplier costs
4. reduce service costs
Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices. This is a case where none of the options are great.
this is an accurate description of shrinkflation, though not a good justification of it
if companies were honest, they'd put"29% less, but the same price! Inflation, you know?", and more-informed consumers could make more-informed choices
indeed, "Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices" is a nicer way of saying "shrinkflation makes it easier to hide from consumers that they are receiving less value for their money"
Thank you for this site, if the author is here, it's something I felt we needed to make markets more informed and more efficient. I'll be submitting content.
I'm not defending CPG companies. I'm pointing out that if you're an indie maker inflation is a problem you need to contend with in your own pricing. Once you start thinking about it from that perspective, you realize how difficult of a problem it is to solve in a way that feels fair to customers.
In theory software is easier because you could more easily change your pricing every month. With CPG these products sit on store shelves and the manufacturers have less direct control over the pricing.
The issue most people have with shrinkflation isn't that the manufacturers made a tough call when all the options were tough, it's that manufacturers do so in a manner deliberately calculated to hide information from the consumer, and in some cases outright deceive them (if they didn't, this shrinkflation tracker wouldn't exist)
To reiterate, a company honest with consumers would inform them they were getting less for the same price, and try to make the case you're making now: "hey, sorry about this, but times are tough, and we can't raise prices"
Not sure if this fits under shrinkflation, but the practice of substituting quality ingredients for cheaper ones is even worse IMO. When Nutella did it, it caused a huge kerfuffle, but it's virtually impossible for a consumer to track this across all the products they buy.
An upstream problem is the money printing that causes some of these incentives in the first place.
> To reiterate, a company honest with consumers would inform them they were getting less for the same price, and try to make the case you're making now: "hey, sorry about this, but times are tough, and we can't raise prices"
How do they do this? They make a chocolate bar that a shop buys and puts on a shelf.
They have to alter the packaging to account for the changes. They can either do so in a way that makes apparent to the customers that they're receiving less value for their money, making sure they're aware of it, or they can do so in a way that attempts to deceive consumers and hide this information.
An example of messaging for the former is described in the quote you quoted. Another would be to use different-looking packaging, to indicate that it is not what it was before. If a consumer will still buy the item when properly informed of the lower value, then this apparent labeling should not have any effect on sales. If it does, it means the information hiding was material, which makes it bad.
tl;dr: companies hide this information because being deceptive increases sales, if it didn't, they wouldn't
> If a consumer will still buy the item when properly informed of the lower value, then this apparent labeling should not have any effect on sales.
If it looks different, consumers might not know it's the same thing just smaller. E.g. if I buy a box of Celebrations, I know what each little sweet is because it shares the same packaging as its normal-sized equivalents. I know it's smaller because...it's smaller.
If it doesn't look different, customers might not know it's a different product than before due to the quantity change, and won't be prompted to investigate further.
Indeed, if the packaging is the same except for the quantity labels, then you don't, in fact, know it's smaller, because both the quantity change and the packaging change has been calculated to hide that fact from you. That's the problem being solved here.
With a proper packaging change, on the other hand, your confusion is resolved within seconds, when you read the packaging, which can include whatever explanatory info the manufacturer decides to put there. And if it's not resolved? The manufacturer should do better to explain.
5. They expansively tier their product line with minor variation to remove the idea of a standard offering. Eg there are some 33 sizes of M&Ms so nobody could say "get me a bag of M&Ms" any more. Forget comparing cell service plans.
6. They generate different model names for sale at different retailers to obstruct comparison shopping. The TV, appliance, and mattress industries are dirty here.
And onther method is offering a new product in the same category with less content for a higher price, eventually switch over all products and level the price, now you have less at the same or higher prices for all products (looking at you teisseire as a latest example)
That's a good explanation, but problems with silently reducing quantity are:
- It attempts to trick the customer
- As a customer, it makes it harder to depend on your product or buy predictably (a box of cereal used to last me through the week, now suddenly it doesn't)
- It is now harder for me to comparison shop because I need to calculate cost per volume/weight
- It is often done at a rate higher than inflation
This site is great, people need more transparency and companies need to be called out
Most of the products on the site appear to be candy/junk that shouldn’t be consumed in large quantities anyway. There is probably substantial social good being done by making the default portions of pringles and chocolate smaller.
And someone pointed out the preponderance of junk food; I want to see core items that are often used in recipes. To me this is the most offensive aspect of these scams: You know your favorite recipe takes four cans of tomatoes, cans that have been the same size for decades. Now... WHOOPS, your meal is messed up because the manufacturer is too gutless to simply raise the price.
Example below. Top row is blurry but bottom row shows “per ounce” price on the bottom right. Tiny print and I imagine barely anyone actually shops that way.
I’m guessing there must be some US requirement for this otherwise I’m not sure why it’s commonplace.
I think the commenter you are responding to does not have enough faith in humanity. Most people I know (anecdotal and biased sampling I know) do check that number when shopping, especially for interchangeable items that don't have a well-know brand such as flour or baking powder.
Here in the US, while unit pricing is commonly displayed, I frequently find that a store will use a wide variety of units, thereby negating the ability to easily compare items in this way. For the same type of product I may see cost per ounce, cost per pound, cost per each, cost per dozen, etc. for various sizes and brands. It's maddening, insulting, and probably in most cases malicious.
Yeah, this is insane e.g. I've seen cents/fl.oz, dollars/litre, cents/ml, dollars/unit. For the same product. And yes, totally malicious. Fresh Thyme does this. It's ugly.
The sadistic think about brands is that people are paying for marketing team to continue to lie to them and brainwash them, to convince them to continue buying their products!
Media is full of brands - gosh I wonder how they have all that budget for expensive marketing campaigns !
It's so incredibly hard to wean someone off brands. I've been campaigning my family for years, but they still seem allergic to Aldi/Lidl etc.
Take cereal (eww):
Aldi Corn Flakes (500g) - £0.75 ($0.93)
Kellogs Cornflakes (500g) - £2.25 ($2.79)
3x more expensive! THREE. (some people might be thinking that $2.79 is nothing but just think in relative terms)
Yes Kellogs Cornflakes taste a bit nicer but that's not the comparison to make: a small serving of oats with some fruit is a MUCH better breakfast meal. Oats are roughly same amount of calories per gram but much more filling and less sugar, salt, fat etc and double the protein. But we're all addicted to cereal because the adverts brainwashed our parents in to thinking it's a healthy meal to have in the morning.
(EDIT: oops guess I'm a hypocrite) And has anyone tasted a McVities Digestive biscuit recently? (similar to a graham cracker, a distant relative of the shortbread - very very popular in the UK)? Absolutely vile. If you're still buying them you're literally an idiot and COVID must have destroyed your taste buds. Aldi own brand digestives taste like the old recipe of McVities Digestives at 1/3 of the price!
the choice as you say it's not between kellogs vs aldi cereals. But between highly processed and industrially produced crap and organic high quality raw foods. I personally don't buy any of the products on this list. But for a lot of people, there isn't a lot of choice but to go to a discount because that's literally only thing they can afford unfortunately.
Breakfast cereal, namely corn flakes, is a mass psychosis. Have them sometimes if you like as a treat, but even then you might as well eat a bowl of ice cream. The idea of eating cornflakes was invented by a guy who gave his "patients" yogurt enemas. Why in 2023 are we still taking his advice?
I don’t get it, would people rather pay higher prices up front?
A lot of times people don’t even use the entirety of a product they pay for. Shrinkflation can essentially just cut that part out. Even if you eat 100% of something, your brain was probably satiated after eating 80%, the rest is excess.
For stuff like candy you won’t notice a missing gummy bear or two. You’ll get the same satisfaction.
A lot of people resent how sneaky shrinkflation feels.
Manufacturers would gladly boast about increasing the size of their product if they did so, but do everything they can to hide when they've shrunk it.
Manipulative tricks like oddly shaped packaging or plastic fillers to take up the space that was previously product are examples of why people hate shrinkflation.
If something goes up in price but the quantity and quality stayed the same, people wouldn't feel like they're being tricked.
They wouldn’t feel tricked, but then they’d be pissed off at the rising prices, which affects their ability to enjoy the product.
If someone sells you a bag of chips but they’ve already eaten two of the chips, your enjoyment of the bag will still be the same as if you had the whole bag. If they reveal that fact to you though, then your experience will be soured.
If you've always been sold a dozen eggs in a package that can hold twelve eggs, but suddenly the same package is relabelled and used to sell you only ten eggs, who in the world looks at that situation and says "as a rational market participant, I can't be mad because the package has indeed been updated to say 'ten eggs' and I just failed to take notice (yolk's on me)."
People like to be dealt with fairly. When they occasionally notice things that make them realize there are rooms full of people whose entire job is to trick them, they don't like it. Where's the mystery?
I just don't understand why you would expect there to be any honest companies left to deal with. Any honest company has an insurmountable disadvantage in a competitive economy where the winners fund the policymakers. The honest business will always, eventually, become the prey of vulture hedge funds and predatory mergers seeking market capture. Even if it's a privately owned business, the monopolies will just drive down prices to force it out of the market, and then once market dominance is achieved, the price rises commensurate to recoup that lost profit. Even if this ploy isn't actually profitable in practice, the financing for such corporations that employ these methods is assured, through the stock market and big banks loan practices. Monopoly is really the only game left in town, they just have to make it look enough like a "free market" to keep people from trying to make it illegal. This is rather simply accomplished by having multiple different companies all owned by the same wealthy shareholders or mutual funds. But, I'm sure you can see all this for yourself, you just can't figure out a better system.
239 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 427 ms ] threadChange in price over time is irrelevant for making a decision on whether or not something is worth the utility to price ratio now. If you are trying to time the market on junk food, then it is best to simply avoid it.
If, for some reason, you want to prevent Mondelez, or whichever other manufacturer, from earning more profit margin than it historically has, then you can look up their public financials most of the time:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MDLZ/mondelez/prof...
To put factual and open information out there of how companies consistently just fuck with all of us and get away with every little thing they can because "profits!" and "their duty to investors!". e.g., the biggest lies our societies ever came up with
And that purchasing power of currencies will go down over time.
This is only true when you keep printing more of it. The creation of currency outpacing the creation of value is inflation.
There was over a decade of QE which the rainmakers said would totally cause inflation. It didn’t.
Then there were supply side shocks which would definitely only cause transitory inflation. Also wrong.
Then we learned that sentiment causes it, and in the middle of terrible sentiment inflation went down.
Every complex problem has a simple, intuitive, easy to understand wrong answer. It is not an exaggeration to say that we do not know what causes inflation.
False
>In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese.
>39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese.
https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h...
>The number of people affected by hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021
I would bet the obesity numbers have greatly increased since 2016.
Price increases in healthy lentils, grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and healthier meats/poultry/fish is a concern for the global poor, but that is not what is talked about here.
> Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3%) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021
It’s easy to talk on a forum like this, where the median salary is massive compared to global/country median, that poor people shouldn’t be able to afford as much bad food. I think when you do so you’ve lost touch with the average person who is affected by things like shrinkflation.
But generally, the people eating burgers in developed countries have a choice of eating healthier foods, and choose to eat burgers instead.
I don't believe though that this is inevitable, and I hope that the first world will continue to improve its situation, and that less well-equipped areas will somehow avoid making the mistakes and leapfrog these uncomfortable middle periods. We see this for instance with the Industrial Revolution, where those that can be credited with facilitating it generally did pretty poorly for themselves, but those who industrialised later were substantially better off.
They're a lot poorer now, and so they have less money to spend on healthy food. So not only are they destroying their health by smoking, they're stuck eating crappy food as well.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/434150/share-of-canadian...
> celluloses, mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, modified starches, lecithins, carrageenans, phosphates, gums, and pectins. Some recent studies have indicated that emulsifiers can disturb gut bacteria and promote inflammation, potentially increasing susceptibility to cardiovascular issues.[0]
0. https://studyfinds.org/food-e-numbers-heart-disease/
https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=soap <- zero results https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=dove <- result has 'soap' in name
1. In the scrolling feed on the homepage, a 0% change is shown as negative with a red down arrow
2. In the tracker page, 0% is grey (good!) but still with a down arrow, which isn't accurate
3. Might be a good idea to highlight egregious offenders over small decreases. Maybe bold the value if it's greater than 10-15%?
4. Would be cool to be able to sort to see the worst offenders!
* assuming the availability of pro bono legal aid as part of social welfare, a key part of any judicial system.
At least where I am (Britain), compensation will be given if the case was deemed to have been opened without sufficient evidence, which keeps the Crown fairly honest about what they prosecute. The police have a slightly less positive record for integrity, but pro bono support is available if you are actually charged. The result of this is that you should never be left financially worse for having been prosecuted if you subsequently win your case.
Finally, you never need to tell anyone that you've been charged. Of course, people can find out if they are keen enough to do so, but I probably pass on the street dozens of people who've been charged and acquitted for crimes, but I would never know and don't need to know.
[0] https://www.buycott.com/api
edit: Yep https://honestreporting.com/fighting-bds-with-buycotts/
You can use it to boycott anything (perceived as conservative or neutral) you like as long as it's not progressive or Israeli.
So, useless.
Thank you for the link.
It's marketing, distribution, etc. I don't think inflation is their excuse to squeeze more money out of you as it is to spend more in other areas of the business, as they should.
Like British housing, horribly overpriced and half of it has mould.
I'd be more interested in home goods such as soap, detergent; and food staples.
>The simplest form of direct adjustment is quantity adjustment, which is used when there is a permanent size change in an item.
If you are an indie maker and priced your product at $10 in 2020, you're now effectively making $8.38 USD[1]. Assuming inflation will remain elevated and you want to maintain the same margins, you need to either:
1. increase prices
2. reduce quality/quantity/features
3. reduce supplier costs
4. reduce service costs
Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices. This is a case where none of the options are great.
[1]: https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1702401372661096477
if companies were honest, they'd put"29% less, but the same price! Inflation, you know?", and more-informed consumers could make more-informed choices
indeed, "Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices" is a nicer way of saying "shrinkflation makes it easier to hide from consumers that they are receiving less value for their money"
Thank you for this site, if the author is here, it's something I felt we needed to make markets more informed and more efficient. I'll be submitting content.
They are hoping you don't notice.
In theory software is easier because you could more easily change your pricing every month. With CPG these products sit on store shelves and the manufacturers have less direct control over the pricing.
To reiterate, a company honest with consumers would inform them they were getting less for the same price, and try to make the case you're making now: "hey, sorry about this, but times are tough, and we can't raise prices"
Less scrupulous and deceptive companies don't
An upstream problem is the money printing that causes some of these incentives in the first place.
How do they do this? They make a chocolate bar that a shop buys and puts on a shelf.
An example of messaging for the former is described in the quote you quoted. Another would be to use different-looking packaging, to indicate that it is not what it was before. If a consumer will still buy the item when properly informed of the lower value, then this apparent labeling should not have any effect on sales. If it does, it means the information hiding was material, which makes it bad.
tl;dr: companies hide this information because being deceptive increases sales, if it didn't, they wouldn't
If it looks different, consumers might not know it's the same thing just smaller. E.g. if I buy a box of Celebrations, I know what each little sweet is because it shares the same packaging as its normal-sized equivalents. I know it's smaller because...it's smaller.
Indeed, if the packaging is the same except for the quantity labels, then you don't, in fact, know it's smaller, because both the quantity change and the packaging change has been calculated to hide that fact from you. That's the problem being solved here.
With a proper packaging change, on the other hand, your confusion is resolved within seconds, when you read the packaging, which can include whatever explanatory info the manufacturer decides to put there. And if it's not resolved? The manufacturer should do better to explain.
5. They expansively tier their product line with minor variation to remove the idea of a standard offering. Eg there are some 33 sizes of M&Ms so nobody could say "get me a bag of M&Ms" any more. Forget comparing cell service plans.
6. They generate different model names for sale at different retailers to obstruct comparison shopping. The TV, appliance, and mattress industries are dirty here. 7. They attempt to detect when comparison shopping is happening and intervene.This site is great, people need more transparency and companies need to be called out
And someone pointed out the preponderance of junk food; I want to see core items that are often used in recipes. To me this is the most offensive aspect of these scams: You know your favorite recipe takes four cans of tomatoes, cans that have been the same size for decades. Now... WHOOPS, your meal is messed up because the manufacturer is too gutless to simply raise the price.
The one example I see on the site is butter: https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=butter
These jagoffs reduced the quantity by 20%, which is definitely enough to mess up recipes.
Anywhere from 1297 to 9248 apparently, I guess he must have some kind of time traveler
Example below. Top row is blurry but bottom row shows “per ounce” price on the bottom right. Tiny print and I imagine barely anyone actually shops that way.
I’m guessing there must be some US requirement for this otherwise I’m not sure why it’s commonplace.
https://supersafeway.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-S...
This feels so foreign to me; I largely ignore the overall price and shop by unit prices within a reasonable size range.
The sadistic think about brands is that people are paying for marketing team to continue to lie to them and brainwash them, to convince them to continue buying their products!
Media is full of brands - gosh I wonder how they have all that budget for expensive marketing campaigns !
It's so incredibly hard to wean someone off brands. I've been campaigning my family for years, but they still seem allergic to Aldi/Lidl etc.
Take cereal (eww):
Aldi Corn Flakes (500g) - £0.75 ($0.93)
Kellogs Cornflakes (500g) - £2.25 ($2.79)
3x more expensive! THREE. (some people might be thinking that $2.79 is nothing but just think in relative terms)
Yes Kellogs Cornflakes taste a bit nicer but that's not the comparison to make: a small serving of oats with some fruit is a MUCH better breakfast meal. Oats are roughly same amount of calories per gram but much more filling and less sugar, salt, fat etc and double the protein. But we're all addicted to cereal because the adverts brainwashed our parents in to thinking it's a healthy meal to have in the morning.
(EDIT: oops guess I'm a hypocrite) And has anyone tasted a McVities Digestive biscuit recently? (similar to a graham cracker, a distant relative of the shortbread - very very popular in the UK)? Absolutely vile. If you're still buying them you're literally an idiot and COVID must have destroyed your taste buds. Aldi own brand digestives taste like the old recipe of McVities Digestives at 1/3 of the price!
It is one a lot of people make, also... you make that comparison literally one line down.
People pay McVities to brainwash them in to thinking they're better, so they don't need to be better LOL
https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/14/590x/seconda...
Oh wait, that's horseshit that even Kellogg can't get away with anymore.
https://thecounter.org/kellogg-sugary-cereal-healthy-label/
Breakfast cereal, namely corn flakes, is a mass psychosis. Have them sometimes if you like as a treat, but even then you might as well eat a bowl of ice cream. The idea of eating cornflakes was invented by a guy who gave his "patients" yogurt enemas. Why in 2023 are we still taking his advice?
A lot of times people don’t even use the entirety of a product they pay for. Shrinkflation can essentially just cut that part out. Even if you eat 100% of something, your brain was probably satiated after eating 80%, the rest is excess.
For stuff like candy you won’t notice a missing gummy bear or two. You’ll get the same satisfaction.
Manufacturers would gladly boast about increasing the size of their product if they did so, but do everything they can to hide when they've shrunk it.
Manipulative tricks like oddly shaped packaging or plastic fillers to take up the space that was previously product are examples of why people hate shrinkflation.
If something goes up in price but the quantity and quality stayed the same, people wouldn't feel like they're being tricked.
If someone sells you a bag of chips but they’ve already eaten two of the chips, your enjoyment of the bag will still be the same as if you had the whole bag. If they reveal that fact to you though, then your experience will be soured.
This is for the consumer’s own benefit.
People like to be dealt with fairly. When they occasionally notice things that make them realize there are rooms full of people whose entire job is to trick them, they don't like it. Where's the mystery?