
The food we buy is shrinking (2018) - polymorph1sm
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180510-the-food-you-buy-really-is-shrinking
======
_eht
Here's an idea, stop constantly feeding yourself from companies who enjoy
playing psychological pricing and ingredient/filler games on massive scales.
Chances are you have someone in your town who roasts coffee beans. Chances are
there are local eggs you could be getting easy, or with a little more effort,
harvesting your own. Stop feeding yourself and your offspring insanely high
levels of sugar breakfast cereal. Have you realized that they skirt food
definitions around you? When was the last time you bought real dairy iced
cream? Why are we chlorinating chicken and pumping it full of saline solution
for the shelves, again?

This article is frustrating because the onus is not directly on the
manufacturing... consumers allow the behaviour by largely being ignorant about
their own nutrition. But who can blame them, we have entire governments
building pyramids to suit questionably beneficial food industries. Where does
all that corn come from for our addiction to high fructose corn syrup?

Stop letting people and companies who do not care about YOU, feed you and your
family.

~~~
GuiA
_> consumers allow the behaviour by largely being ignorant about their own
nutrition._

This idea that "consumers allow the behavior" is a very pernicious one - it's
common in the context of global warming too ("if only people stopped driving
their car and started caring about the planet!").

It's an utter reversion of causality. People are going to do whatever makes
the most sense given their own context, and if you're struggling time and
money wise to take care of your family in a nutritional desert [0], and the
only jobs you can get require you to drive an hour a day, then of course
you're going to be buying frozen waffles at Walmart and Big Mac takeout for
your kids and driving your car around. Not to mention the billions of dollars
spent on advertising to manipulate people - what do you want citizens to do,
when their own educational system fails to teach them the most basic
literacy/numerical skills? [1]

We need to be angry at governments and companies, not people doing what they
can to merely get by.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert)
[1] [https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/patterns-literacy-among-
us...](https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/patterns-literacy-among-us-students)

~~~
pmoriarty
Not only that, but even if you can afford (both in time and money) to shop for
honest, nutritional alternatives, how many people are really going to spend a
significant amount of their time seeking out and acquiring these alternatives?

The OP talks about finding local sources of coffee and eggs, but many people
would have no idea of where to get those, nor have any means of verifying that
they were really what they claimed and not fraudulent.

As a consumer, I have no way of knowing if, for instance, the people hawking
food at my local farmer's market (which I'm lucky enough to live within a
convenient distance of) are really source their food locally or just pretend
to. I have no means of verifying whether their food is really "organic", or is
merely sold as such.

To take an example, the adulteration of "raw", "organic" honey with fillers
like corn syrup is a serious problem.[1][2] An individual consumer has
virtually no means at their disposal to determine which honey is genuine,
short of becoming a beekeeper themselves or having a trusted beekeper friend,
which is (I would venture to guess) the case for approximately 0% of the
population.

The same goes for pretty much every other product. In aggregate, for all of
the products a typical consumer buys, this can not be solved at an individual
level.

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518291)

[2] - [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884kq4/your-fancy-
honey-m...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884kq4/your-fancy-honey-might-
not-actually-be-honey)

------
hombre_fatal
To be cheeky, I didn't see any real food in the picture nor the article. My
fruit and vegetables aren't getting any smaller.

Frankly, given the problems with health, diet, and obesity in most of the
world, anything that makes more nutritional food compete easier with packaged
food seems like a good thing. Like "packaged food is ripping us off" would be
an excellent meme if it took any real hold. We're dying.

I watched a video that compared the food we have in our convenience stores to
what they have in Japan (fresh soups, vegetables, fish) and it really opened
my eyes about how our lives/health could be, and how effortless healthy
choices could be. Until then, the only thing perishable at my local 7/11 is a
mealy saran wrapped apple and it has to somehow compete with all the tastier
packaged food.

~~~
yowlingcat
> To be cheeky

You should have spent a little bit more time reading the article than the
admittedly poor headline. The article isn't about making "more nutritional
food compete easier with packaged food", it's about how packaged /products/
(not just food) are stealthily shrinking as prices remain fixed so as to
slowly increase effective unit price to the end consumer.

That is the point of the article, and your comment has nothing to do with it.

~~~
perl4ever
I already know that shrinking a package is a common tactic, but I also know it
goes in cycles. For instance, long ago, spaghetti used to come in 1 lb boxes.
Then I started seeing reduced size packages. Now it seems mostly back to 1 lb.

My reaction to the headline is that the article is probably dumb and I don't
want to read it, because the implication is that there is a new trend which
will go on indefinitely until every food product is like a teaspoon.

If the article was like, here's an interesting way in which economics and
psychology interact to produce a discontinuous behavior in the marketplace,
I'd be more positive.

In other words, I have the same sour reaction as to most stuff these days - I
hate journalism, clickbait, and ad-tech.

~~~
svieira
Actually, they cite that behavior _exactly_:

> Still, in the end, Dworsky says that the sneakiness, and the sense that
> companies have a low opinion of their customers' intelligence, is what gets
> to him most. Over his years as a professional observer of grocery shelves,
> he has noticed an interesting pattern: it is common for a downsized product
> to come full circle. First a product drops from 16oz to 14.5oz. Then, as the
> years pass, maybe it goes down to 11oz. Perhaps it even drops to 8oz. Then,
> a 16oz size appears again. But this time, it's the super or mega size. And
> the cost is much, much higher than that of the original.

~~~
perl4ever
It's obviously not literally true, though. That's what I find irritating, the
exaggeration and the tone, and I think it confirms that my prejudice was
exactly right.

The cycle does not take a huge amount of time, and if it was extreme as people
pretend, then we would know it because of inflation rates, and we would all be
buying super-ultra-mega sizes of everything. And it's not a low opinion of
peoples' intelligence, it's a recognition that people are sensitive to price
increases for unchanged products. It's directly dictated by what people feel
is fair.

I wish we could have articles that don't have the tone of feeding a
persecution complex.

------
stuart78
This theme always reminds me of the story Joel Spolsky related about
optimizing the number of sesame seeds on a burger bun [0]. It may work for a
while, but there is a logical lower limit to how small an ice cream container
can be before it becomes a pint (e.g. pint plus 1/32 oz?). But that is always
the next guy's problem, I suppose.

[0] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/09/11/theres-no-place-
li...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/09/11/theres-no-place-like-127001/)

~~~
fmajid
Well, I stopped buying Haagen-Dazs when their tubs shrank and stuck to Ben &
Jerry instead. And I stopped buying Tropicana Orange Juice when they shrank
their juice containers from 64 fl. oz. to 59. You can't fool all of the people
all the time.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
My favorite example of this in Canada is a brand of butter that is
shaped/looks exactly like a standard pound of butter when it sits on the
shelf... but when you pick it up it's actually half a pound of butter... as
it's only half as thick as you would expect it to be.

It's usually priced higher than your average stick of butter as well.

I picked one up once, laughed, and have actively avoided looking at that brand
ever since.

It's been on the shelf for years now though so they must be making good money?

------
diego_moita
I make my own yogurt, my own ice-cream and maintain a wild-yeast culture for
making sourdough. I roast my coffee in a popcorn popper for espresso. I make
my own cookies, cakes, spice mixes, jam from raspberries on the back-yard and
even some cleaning products. Sometimes I churn my butter.

But, still, found this article disturbing. I can't make my own toilet paper,
milk or cream (for the ice-cream). We need some more creative destruction on
the economy.

------
pengaru
This isn't a remotely recent phenomena.

Back in the 90s when I was studying computer graphics I checked out a textbook
on statistics and data visualization from the local library. I don't remember
the year it was published, but it was one of those old hardcover books with
browning coarse paper pages and a dark linen lining on the exterior.

It was full of real world, hand-drawn visualizations, and one of the economic
examples plotted Hersheys chocolate bar size per year across over a decade,
with some other economic factor, GDP or some such. The text went a bit off on
a tangent describing how the price of the bar stayed relatively constant but
its volume varied in lockstep with the economy.

I doubt you could use the Hersheys bar today as an economic barometer since we
have so much variety on the store shelves. Back then there was just one
Hersheys bar... but they seem to have always manipulated its size over its
price.

------
dariosalvi78
I never read the price per unit, I always read the price per liter, kg etc.
and use that to compare products.

~~~
tpmx
I do the same. I'm in Sweden. There's old school pre-EU-legislation for price
labels to have show a comparison price like that here. I've always assumed
this came out of the consumer-empowerment-movement in the 70s, here. Is there
a similar thing in the rest of the EU? Perhaps this is left to the member
countries?

------
racecar789
Given enough time, customers will eventually exit the market. Ex: I have
completely stopped buying processed cereal (Cheerios etc) in favor of natural
oatmeal.

I have a 40lb bag of oatmeal at home that will last 4 months. Also much
healthier.

When I see tiny cereal boxes on a store shelf...I shake my head.

------
noir_lord
When I lived alone I ate a lot of convenience food and pre-made sauces and
such, then I moved in with my partner and she cooks everything from scratch
(she's same age as me and Hungarian so she grew up under communism-lite where
having your own animals and veg/fruit gardens was common if you lived in the
country).

Honestly I'd forgotten how _good_ basic food tastes when it's cooked fresh -
she makes simple things like mashed potato amazing and she bakes a lot as well
- she wastes no food, left-overs are used up as lunch or frozen.

The _really_ stupid part of all this from my point of view was that our
combined food bill from raw ingredients is about the same as what I was paying
living alone.

~~~
carapace
My sister got a whole chicken from the butcher and roasted it.

I tasted a bit and went into a fugue, when I came to I found I had made a
chicken sandwich!

I used to think I didn't like chicken but it turns out I'd just never tasted
it before.

~~~
noir_lord
My partner can get 3 meals for 3 of us out of a single chicken.

She also buys the 'cheaper' parts like Chicken thighs and then slow cooks them
to utter perfection, with a few herbs and veggies it is sublime.

I honestly though since I 'cooked' I was been economical but things like
spaghetti bolognaise jars of sauce added 30% to the cost of a meal compared to
the way she does it.

~~~
carapace
Riiiiight? It's cheaper and tastier and I'm sure it's healthier.

> She also buys the 'cheaper' parts like Chicken thighs and then slow cooks
> them to utter perfection, with a few herbs and veggies it is sublime.

That sounds so good. :-)

------
Brian_K_White
I always thought cake pops were the ultimate expression of this idea about the
smaller dessert.

Here is a single bite of cake.

(They sell them at Starbucks, I don't know how much of a thing they are
anywhere else. Actually I just realized I see the same idea in several
restaurants with fancy little desserys in shot glasses. Still $6.50 for that
one or two bites though.

------
crocodiletears
I wonder if this shrinkage skews cost of living indices to any relevant
degree. Changes to individual products may not amount to much money lost, but
I could see them adding up in a non-trivial way that flies under the radar for
most researchers.

------
chrisseaton
I don't understand what the problem is.

Either the value makes sense to you at the point of purchase or it doesn't.
What does it matter to anyone what it used to cost yesterday? This isn't
yesterday and you aren't being offered the product at yesterday's price, so
forget about what happened yesterday. Take the current price or leave it.

The article talks about 'sneakiness'. I don't get it. Are they lying about the
volume or weight of the product? No? So what on earth is the problem?
Sometimes prices go up, sometimes they go down. It's not some secret
conspiracy. Prices fluctuate, world markets and supply conditions change,
labour prices change. Does he think it's the job of a manufacturer of ice
cream to protect him from the sands of time?

And for some of the examples in the article... do people really need larger
servings of 'fruit loops' of all things? Come on.

~~~
yowlingcat
> I don't understand what the problem is.

Is it that you don't understand what the problem is, or that it makes you
uncomfortable to look at the problem? Let me phrase a few questions that help
me think about what I think the problem is in a few ways:

\- Do you think it's necessary or unnecessary for American regulations on
advertising to exist?

\- Do you think it ought to be punished for products to be packaged in a
deceptive manner as long as it's theoretically possible to see the base
information to make a determination about the product?

\- Do you think that manufacturers that sell high purity goods can survive
against those that diluted purity goods loaded with adulterants while
concealing that and winning marketshare on volume?

~~~
chrisseaton
I agree with advertising regulations.

I don't think any situation described in this article is deceptive.

I think it's up to the consumer to pick purity that meets their needs. I'm not
really sure how pure 'fruit loops' can be though so I'm not sure that's
relevant here.

In summary, there's no moral issue here. The price by weight or volume of
every product is accessible to the consumer, and they can judge the quality of
the product on their own.

And anyway a half gallon of ice cream is an absolutely obscene quantity, and
it's a good thing producers are packaging things in more reasonable sizes.

~~~
yowlingcat
> I think it's up to the consumer to pick purity that meets their needs.

This isn't legal for pharmaceuticals, for instance. And if this were true,
what is the point of the FDA? Why was the act established in the first place,
why does the administration exist? What makes food, which is just as
consumable (and can also have a significant impact on one's body), any
different from drugs? I think that there is a reason the act's name is called
the "Pure Food And Drug Act" \-- emphasis on the world "pure".

~~~
chrisseaton
There's no indication in the article that any of the products have an
_illegal_ impurity is there? Some of them have a different purity level, which
may not be what you want, but someone else might be happy with at that price
point. If the purity of your old brand doesn't work for you, buy a different
one instead.

~~~
yowlingcat
> an illegal impurity

What makes an impurity illegal in the first place?

What is the difference between a legal and illegal impurity?

~~~
chrisseaton
Normally there are regulations about what you can and can't put in a food
product. For example chocolate often has to contain a certain percentage of
cocoa solids.

But again this isn't what this article is about. This article is about food
products being smaller _than he 'd like_ and in some cases less pure _than he
'd like_. Not illegal small or illegally impure. He should just pick another
product if they don't meet his requirements. He thinks he's exposing some kind
of conspiracy, when really it's market prices and tastes changing.

~~~
yowlingcat
> Normally there are regulations about what you can and can't put in a food
> product. For example chocolate often has to contain a certain percentage of
> cocoa solids.

I hear you, but that's not exactly what I'm asking. I'm asking a more specific
question: how does a thing, previously legal, comes to be illegal? What
happens at a societal and legislative level for such a change to transpire?

~~~
chrisseaton
Are you asking me how legislation works? I'm not an expert on how it works in
your country but you can often look up YouTube videos online if you want.

~~~
yowlingcat
> Are you asking me how legislation works?

No. Laws do not exist a priori. They are constructed by the human society that
forms structures and mechanisms to create them. I am asking you _why_
legislation comes into existence. In this specific case, I am asking you _why_
the Pure Food And Drug Act came into existence. Do you know the history?

~~~
chrisseaton
Because of dangerous impurity.

But this isn't dangerous impurity.

This is a guy angry that he isn't getting as many fruity loops as he used to.

~~~
yowlingcat
> Because of dangerous impurity.

Now we are getting somewhere. Yes, dangerous impurity -- that is part of it.
But the act also prohibits selling "misbranded or adulterated" food or drugs.
For the purpose of food, the act defines "misbranded" as:

```

First. If it be an imitation of or offered,for sale under the distinctive name
of another article . Second. If it be labeled or branded so as to deceive or
mislead the purchaser, or purport to be a foreign product when not so, or if
the contents of the package as originally put up shall have been removed in
whole or in part and other contents shall have been placed in such package, or
if it fail to bear a statement on the label of the quantity or proportion of
any morphine, opium, cocaine, heroin, alpha or beta eucane, chloroform,
cannabis indica, chloral hydrate, or teetanilide, or any derivative or
preparation of any of such substances contained therein .

```

Key points here: 1\. "If it be labeled or branded so as to deceive or mislead
the purchaser"

2\. "if the contents of the package as originally put up shall have been
removed in whole or in part and other contents shall have been placed in such
package"

If you did indeed make the assumption that the point of the act was to limit
and only limit dangerous impurity, then I think it's important to challenge
that, because it seems to be an error by omission. The full text of the act
clearly references not just dangerous impurities, but the whole spirit of
deceptive dilution of purity with filler.

And this is why I think it's important to know the history behind it as well.
The act did not fall from the sky. It was not merely a matter of people
dropping dead from poisonous adulterated products. There was a broader
spectrum of adulteration, from lethal danger to deceptive but unlikely to be
dangerous to anything but your pocketbook. And either way, there was a
national uproar about it, and people had decided they'd had enough with it and
they pressured legislature for redress. There is a reason that said
legislature didn't just stop at prohibiting dangerous impurities, and that is
because there wasn't just an element of physical grievance, but moral
grievance as well. I think that arguments which presume that the market itself
is a good enough mechanism end up missing this element of the act.

The act was set up not just to protect consumers from physical danger, but to
protect society from dishonest, anti-consumer business tactics which are
intended to deceive. It is the latter part which I believe your argument
misses.

[1] [http://library.clerk.house.gov/reference-
files/PPL_059_384_F...](http://library.clerk.house.gov/reference-
files/PPL_059_384_FoodDrugCosmeticAct.pdf)

~~~
chrisseaton
Sorry - none of this seems applicable to me, because the products are honestly
and non-deceptively marked.

~~~
yowlingcat
Is it better to have a market for lemons, or not?

------
carapace
I still remember when 12 oz cans became 11.5 oz cans.

------
lazylizard
And yet my bmi keeps going up...perhaps they need to downsize some more...

------
prpl
The ultimate example of this is dollar stores like Dollar General.

~~~
thomasahle
I feel like it's pretty fair in thst case. By definition they can't raise
prices, so how else are they to keep up with inflation?

