Article could have profited by adopting a neutral tone instead of attempting to be comedic. Surely information on historical sizes has not been lost. As for the candy bar market: the ideal outcome for the consumer would be if a single candy bar ended up being a reasonable portion size, priced proportionately to cost to produce.
I was surprised to learn the Mars bar familiar from my childhood wasn't a product of the original American corporation Mars Inc.
Frank Mars founded the American company. His son Forrest invented Milky Way, but then eventually quarreled with his dad and was removed from the business. Forrest moved to England, founded his own company, and the Mars bar was his first product: a European version of Milky Way.
Later he inherited the original American business and merged the UK one into it.
Shrinkflation is all over. Burger buns at fast food places were more dense 20 years ago. The small burgers had 1/8th pound patties instead of the current 1/10th pound. It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation.
Nuggets are the same shape (boot, circle) but slightly smaller and much thinner now. If I had to estimate, probably 40% less pink sludge goes into each one.
Agreed. It's not just a reduction in size, but a reduction in general quality. For example, my preferred NIVEA roll-on deodorant used to come in a glass bottle and now it comes in a plastic one.
I suspect shrinkflation has a lot to do with inflation. Companies degrade the quality of their products to preserve their margins which are being eaten up by inflation.
everything is being min-maxed, have you noticed how flimsy and soft cereal boxes have become, and plastic-packaged goods having thinner plastic, and often replaceable lids have been replaced with single-use film (thinking specifically of hummus for this one).
Taking the time to count the ways shrinkflation is (fractionally) eroding quality of life would take an age.
Inflation is the most honest. Shrinkflation can be okay if the marketing changes.
But what I cannot stand is cutting quality of products and services. It happens in all sorts of ways. Thickeners and substitutions but also when a supermarket wastes your time asking you to scan N of the same SKU at rather than providing a qty button and even the staff can't help. But on the old school checkouts they do have a quantity field. It's different when they know their time will be wasted you see. And then there is the endless market segmentation from coupons, bundles, surveillance pricing and all sorts of mechanisms designed to muddy price signals and discriminate to shake down every customer to their limit.
How much of this recorded in consumer inflation I wonder? So much effort is put into scheming rather than innovation which seems highly inefficient if you think about productivity. Isn't late stage capitalism great.
Food reporting is often framed like this, as if the smaller size was a bad thing, or the price / gram, pound or ounce is the relevant criteria. Esp in the case of candy, you would think smaller sizes would satisfy the other framing for food items, esp in America, that over-sized food leads to obesity. It is a lose-lose framing, with nutritional value completely ignored. Instead, the reporting is always how people are being ripped off or making an unhealthy choice.
Just my personal anecdata, it took my a while to put a finger on it, but it seemed like something started to change in products in the 90s. Bag of chips started to fill up with more air and less chips, candy bars got smaller, airlines started reducing seat sizes. Super huge discount? retail stores opened, that you usually needed a membership card. Walmart started offering the cheapest sourced product from around the world that was often just slightly inferior to what you use to be able to get, or the price on the higher quality item went up while the slightly lower quality item price went down. Washing machines started using all these cheap plastic parts that more easily wear down or break. Electronics started to get added to everything whether it is needed or not, usually for switches where the electronic part is cheaper than the mechanical equivalent.
And I realized, this is what people want, in the sense of this is what they will pay for, this is how they vote with their wallet. What I want is not this, but it is what society wants.
TBH chocolate bar shouldn't be too large because you usually eat it as a whole. But chips, butter, chocolate etc. shouldn't be downsized. It's simply cheating
I once read that Hershey has put a calories cap of 250 on a serving of their candy. That jives with what I see on the store shelves. I wonder if Mars did the same thing and perhaps the reduction in size was due (at least in part?) to that.
Since we are commenting in a tech website about chocolate bars, I'll say this. I bought one or more every day for years during my childhood from about 7 years old to 12 years old. Must have walked and rode my bike enough to stay fit. I also filled my lent box when I gave them up (Church donation, put the money you would spend on your daily fun into a box instead of spending it)
Cheez-Its: 1 lb, down to 13.7 oz, then 12.4 oz, now 7 oz. 100% cheese product is now just salt, whey, yeast powder blend (they're allowed to call that cheese).
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 25.6 ms ] threadSlow shrinkflation, then one day "now bigger!" (with a price increase) and then repeat.
Frank Mars founded the American company. His son Forrest invented Milky Way, but then eventually quarreled with his dad and was removed from the business. Forrest moved to England, founded his own company, and the Mars bar was his first product: a European version of Milky Way.
Later he inherited the original American business and merged the UK one into it.
I suspect shrinkflation has a lot to do with inflation. Companies degrade the quality of their products to preserve their margins which are being eaten up by inflation.
Taking the time to count the ways shrinkflation is (fractionally) eroding quality of life would take an age.
But what I cannot stand is cutting quality of products and services. It happens in all sorts of ways. Thickeners and substitutions but also when a supermarket wastes your time asking you to scan N of the same SKU at rather than providing a qty button and even the staff can't help. But on the old school checkouts they do have a quantity field. It's different when they know their time will be wasted you see. And then there is the endless market segmentation from coupons, bundles, surveillance pricing and all sorts of mechanisms designed to muddy price signals and discriminate to shake down every customer to their limit.
How much of this recorded in consumer inflation I wonder? So much effort is put into scheming rather than innovation which seems highly inefficient if you think about productivity. Isn't late stage capitalism great.
And I realized, this is what people want, in the sense of this is what they will pay for, this is how they vote with their wallet. What I want is not this, but it is what society wants.
Is that some kind of achievement? Just look in the ads/coupons in the newspaper archive if you want to see the size of foods in the past.
In the United States, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks shrinkflation as part of the Consumer Price Index:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-12/measuring-shrinkflati...