Secret Food Increase

[Mary Webber]

What really gets me about the shrinking package sizes is that so many recipes call for, let's say a can of evaporated milk, and when that recipe was written that can was 14 ounces, now it's as low as 12 ounces. That can really mess up your cooking, aside from feeling ripped off.

[Myscha Theriault]

Mary, I so hear you about the recipe thing. That frustrates me on a regular basis. It's hard enough some days to find the energy for a money saving "from scratch" recipe, and when you've got run around figuring out a way to use part of a second can of something (tomato products, pumpkin), it can be a pain. I use the ice cube tray thing and am happy to continue doing so, but if I haven't planned to incorporate it into my schedule that day, it can be a real pain.

On a side note, I have also noticed the banana and pork loin price increases mentioned previously. Getting them spotted and marked down is how I've been rolling with it. Then freezing them and using them for breakfast drinks and baking, etc. If we want some fresh, I pick out the freshest of the marked down ones I pick up and set those out, taking care that we eat them right away. Still, I miss all the 99 cent per pound pork loin sales I used to find. It was great to slice them into boneless chops, or cook a whole one for special occasions . . .

[Mary Webber]

I've also noticed that cleaning and paper goods are shrinking in content amounts, although of course not in packaging sizes. This in one of my biggest gripes with places like Wal-Mart, that they don't post unit prices. I wonder what it would take to get them to do that??

[pidgeon92]

There is nothing new about this practice. I used to work for a company that made disposable plastic products, and rather than increase the price they always reduced the number in the package, or made the products thinner, or a combination of the two. It's becoming newsworthy now because everybody seems to be doing it at the same time.

[Mary Webber]

A long time ago on a rainy summer day when I needed something to amuse my then-small children, I had them do a counting project. We'd gotten a package of paper plates in three colors. They had to first guess which color got the 34th (or 100th) plate, then they each counted a color. Of course we came up with 96 plates, even after counting twice. A lesson learned!

After talking with my quite-indignant kids, I wrote to the company. We received a most apologetic letter and a big box of their products... Second lesson learned.

[purplefdu]

Thats almost as bad as the sample of Glade Gel scents I received, sealed box with expired coupon but no sample. Second box had two samples but no coupons. Never ceases to amaze me how poor quality control has become.

And my husband just wrote to Edys. They were BOGO free at 4.99 this weekend at Shaws. But now 1.5ltr not 2ltrs. he almost had a cow right there in the middle of the frozen section. Most of the changes are small but you can tell from the midget container its a big change and not in price.

And mcnerd it is a dirty tactic when they don't even think to admit they are making the packages smaller, just shrinking them. if its truly necessary why not admit to it before people realize and get pissed off? Let me tell you I won't be buying alot of the products with large drops in size but none in price without a coupon to make it free.

[Bernadette]

Originally Posted by mcnerd

Yes dirty tactic for sure. Instead they should just increased their prices for each product and made it almost impossible to afford buying the products at all.

Hm. Do I detect just a tiny bit of sarcasm in your reply?

Seriously, though, the tactic of decreasing the size of the portion while keeping the same price is nothing new. When I was a kid I even remember Mad magazine (I think it was) doing a feature on the subject. They showed giant packages with ever-smaller candy bars inside. And that was about what I noticed in my Saturday morning candy-buying expeditions at that time, too.

But mcnerd, whether marketers reduce the size of the portion or boost the price for the larger portion, the result is the same. If quantity X of a certain item becomes unaffordable, then that same quantity becomes unaffordable however the packaging is done.

I do agree that making smaller portions at the same price is sneaky and deceptive. But if I were selling a food product, I'm not sure I'd do it any differently. After all, the alternative is having customers stand there in front of the shelves grumbling, "Those greedy b******s, look how they've hiked their prices!"

[Bernadette]

Originally Posted by purplefdu

if its truly necessary why not admit to it before people realize and get pissed off?

Probably because more customers would get pissed off if the marketers took your advice and admitted to what they're doing.

You get pissed off because you notice. But you're in the minority.

The majority stays happy because they don't notice.

I don't like the practice. But I understand why they feel they have to do it.

[Andrea Dickson]

This is true in regular grocery store purchases, but I'm sure we make up the calories with our truckloads of popcorn at the movie theater.

Seriously, the only time I notice packaging being incredibly misleading is when I buy potato chips or boxes of crackers. Half the packaging is always air.

[Mary Webber]

Unit prices! That's the answer because then it's an apples-to-apples comparison no matter what they're doing to reduce package size or content amount.