Along with skimpflation in sizes, keep a look out for it in things like legally protected terms. For instance ice cream has to have a certain level of milk fat to be legally called “ice cream”, if they aren’t it’ll be called something like “frozen dairy dessert”.
Huh.. that must explain why I've been seeing a lot of brands switching to the term "frozen yogurt" for what is essentially cheap "ice cream" (=> tastes nothing like actual frozen yogurt...).
> Unlike yogurt, frozen yogurt is not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (wikipedia)
You can still buy real juice at pretty much any supermarket. It's just sold in the fridge section at 3x the price compared to those 4L jugs of sugar water.
I'm sure with some brands this is what you say it is, but I know for some of the good ones it's more like: yes, the ice cream was at 10% milkfat, but the total percentage in the packaged product is dragged down because it has chocolate chips and cookie dough and whatnot mixed in.
Not sure if that’s the case. But maybe? I think I remember seeing some well known brands of plain vanilla go back and forth on the labeling over the years.
I tend to hoard food and will consume it on a "first in last out" basis so I'm constantly rotating stock and nothing expires before being consumed.
One day I noticed that the bag of mixed nuts I just bought was labelled 50g less than a bag I had purchased a few months ago. It wasn't the case that there were less nuts in the bag. The bag itself was smaller so as to maintain the appearance of robustness.
What struck me is that this probably wasn't in response to any sort of supply or demand shock, but was probably already planned since the product was first introduced. The way the design on the package was already reconfigured and then the package distributed to factories to be filled with the new amount, the producers knew and planned beforehand that it would happen, number crunched and everything.
So now I already internally think to myself that any consumable product that screams great value will inevitably fall victim to skimpflation, because it was planned from the start. Make an awesome product, get people hooked on it, and then slowly ratchet back the value to reap the gains. And of course hope people don't notice.
This pattern with happening with tools. Milwaukee released a impact driver and it received great reviews, they were practically indestructible. They just released a revision of it, same model number and packaging but completely changed the inside and now you can't even change a set of tires with one before it dies.
And in fact, some tech reviewers recently declared (as recalled in a submission in this pages) that it is becoming useless to review products that may suddenly be shipped with a dramatic drop in their quality, while keeping the same name.
But that's not what "less nuts" means. The same mass of nuts... Will be the same mass. That's how mass works, unless like the previous commenter mentioned the nuts are truly less dense. I was also confused by the phrasing the OP used
As far as I'm aware, half gallon isn't 58 ounces so that's not what that container is. You can't just say that there is a new conversion factor
That's out of the control of food producers. The central banks create more money every year so everyone else just has to deal with it. It's widely agreed on that a small amount of inflation is good for society. Just means prices go up slightly every year but hopefully your wages get bumped in sync.
> One recent example of skimpflation that consumers did notice involved Conagra's Smart Balance spread, a dairy-free butter substitute. Conagra recently changed its formulation to reduce its share of vegetable oil from 64% to 39% — an almost 40% reduction in vegetable oil.
Ugh, nobody should be eating congealed vegetable oil in the first place. One more advantage of eating real food like butter is that they can’t replace the ingredients with something else when it’s just one ingredient.
This is correct. The difference between US and Canadian milk is Canada's fine filtering and laws against steroid and antibiotics. The reason Canadians resented the forced import of US milk is because of course milk is cheaper when health-impacting shortcuts are taken.
Unfortunately, the higher price of Canadian milk means that dairy products like ice cream and yogurt are padded out with "milk ingredients", "skim milk powder", and "milk protein powder" from cheaper imported US milk, because the powdered products circumvent import limits.
(The higher prices in Canada probably have more to do with supply controls than quality controls, though).
Supply control is a huge factor in the pricing. People will always try to find those shortcuts, and unfortunately the purchasers are very rarely better off for it.
There was a (thankfully brief) period in the 70's when people were buying powdered milk to save money. But then again, it was around the same time they were pretending that margarine was healthier than butter. There was even an illegal margarine trade that we euphemistically referred to as "Quebec Butter."
The person you're responding to is almost certainly exaggerating, and moreover probably has a better handle on the vibe of their relationship than you can get from a one sentence joke.
It's nonetheless a shitty thing to do, independent of whether this person actually does it. People absolutely do the thing they may have been joking about.
I stand by the opinion that the behavior you endorse is the behavior you walk by. So, I believe it's important to call out casual "jokes" at other's expense like this. Just like if someone was like, "women, and I right?"
Ribbing your significant other over minor things is part of the dynamic of many intimate relationships. Usually both parties know nothing is meant. You don't like it and that's fine, but it's not generically shitty.
This has been an issue for quite a while. "Shinkflation" is what it was called before.
- SSD manufacturers have been caught subbing out chips from release to mid market life
- Airlines cut services during the pandemic but never repriced out it without that service (I'm looking at you SAS with closing the lounge but advertising lounge access at ORD)
- Restaurants are now asking 18-30% tip on their electronic card payments.
- Restaurants and stores are cutting hours and menus extremely aggressively while increasing prices and understaffing.
We've been having 'skimpflation' or 'crapiflation' for decades.
The hedonic adjustment in the inflation figures accounts for eg washing machines getting relatively cheaper with more functions etc. But it doesn't account for the fact they've also been getting crappier and shorter-lived.
This is why the government advertised figures for inflation are bullshit. The real inflation over the past 3 decades is much higher because of both skimpflation and the fact that they keep adjusting the basket of goods inflation is measured against.
Oh man, the Smart Balance debacle was real! My spouse and I noticed that it doesn't melt anymore. We thought we were going crazy, until we read about it elsewhere. Suffice to say we've switched away from it now and won't be going back. What a dumb move by the manufacturer.
They claim it is to make it more spreadable. I guess it is just a coincidence that it cuts their cost of ingredients by about 50%, since they only thing they replaced it with was water.
I would really like to see a nutrition label for manufactured goods, including what countries parts come from. In particular I would love to see semantic versioning applied to manufactured products so it's easier to see when products change.
The versioning is a good idea. I feel like we have the right to know when something has changed.
As much as I want to know how much of what I'm eating is lead and sawdust from Elbonia, it sounds like it would be tricky to implement. Lots of constituent parts with mixed origins. Where's the maltodextrin from? The factories it was processed in? The countries where the grain came from? The place it was all packaged? We get into "nobody knows how to make a pencil" territory pretty fast. Though I like the spirit of the idea.
Even with non-manufactured goods, I wonder how the nutrition in things like broccoli change over time. I remember hearing somewhere that some of the nutrients had gone down due to changes in farming practice, but I don't think I've seen much evidence that anyone is even tracking this.
I’ve read similar things. I know for a fact that a modern 2x4 is not the same as 2x4 from fifty years ago, and I’m not just talking about the actual size. Modern lumber has very wide rings.
Or the $50 daily valet fee. And don't forget the gratuitous tips expected when dropping off, picking up, or needing to get something from your vehicle.
My girlfriend and I would love that. We love to travel, but rarely have the time to use things like pools unless we’ve specifically rented a room with a double jacuzzi. (If you haven’t done this, and have a partner; please do. I guarantee it’ll make your lives while it’s around.)
If we didn’t have to pay for a pool we’d never use (we don’t even pack bathing suits) that would be fantastic.
To add: it's just a way to make their hotel appear more attractive. They advertise thier nightly room rate. When you check in the actual amount you're charged is much more.
The "best by" date on items in UK supermarkets has been contracting since the first covid lockdown.
Unless you buy frozen, you can't do the traditional "weekly shop" anymore unless you want a fridge full of expired food.
Either the shortage of preservative packaging gasses is in full swing still or they're doing it to keep people shopping more regularly while hiking prices.
If it's anything like it is in Australia "best before" is different to "use by".
"Use by" refers to when it's actually expired and could be dangerous to consume after that date.
"Best before" however is generally meaningless and is meant to refer to the quality of the product, it's also been sugested by many consumer groups to be deliberately used as a method to push consumers to discard perfectly safe product.
A best-by date isn't really an expiration date, if your fridge is clean then you've usually got a week or two longer than the best-by date before the food actually goes bad. Depends on the food of course.
If they can’t keep the price low then a lot of consumers will go for cheaper/lower quality goods anyway,
Even for high-end enthusiast items, consumer sensitivity to price is pretty high. Just look at how bitter people have been about the NVidia RTX 4 series GPUs.
I know someone who buys groceries from Target because it’s significantly cheaper than other grocery stores in their area. This seems due to Target still implementing a kind of national pricing. Possible unexciting arbitrage opportunity there, I suppose?
Dollarama always does this with their dog treats. Every year or so there is either one less treat in the pack, the actual treats get shorter, or looser wound to look the same size but now more hollow, or the price goes up 50c. My dogs used to chew them for 15 minutes to a half hour. Now they're a soggy mess within a couple minutes, so they don't get much chewing in from those same treats these days. My elder dog chews until it becomes soggy, then abandons it for a few days until it's hard again. It's really annoying because they never used to get soggy at all.
What used to have 6 in the pack is now 4 shorter, less dense, more expensive, yet packaged to look like nothing happened. All in only 4 years time!
It might be that consumers have to get into the habit of writing down sizes and prices of what they buy in order to witness first hand how they get short changed so often, but in a non-apparent way meant to deceive you at every step.
Keep an eye on price labels attached to the shelves and compare the weight listed on those labels with the weight listed on the package itself.
Trader Joes shrank their meatloaf from 24 oz to 16 oz, but at the store I visit, kept the same price label that still says 24 oz. A 33% reduction in weight for the same price as before.
That stuff is basically canned sugar water, the profit margin must be quite high to begin with. That makes the price a bit less sensitive to inflation.
We've heard about shrinking products for decades. They must occasionally return to their original sizes, or they'd be really tiny right now.
I've also been hearing that Cocoa Puffs are "Now! More Chocolatey!" at regular intervals my entire life. They must have not tasted like anything at all when I first ate them in the 70s.
Perhaps it's "more chocolatey" because they replaced the "chocolate" (which I believe has some regulations around actually containing cocoa butter) with "chocolatey" (which, by not claiming to be chocolate, can just be flavoring).
> “chocoriffic” (no one actually uses that one, but maybe they should.)
The author is blissfully unaware of a vile concoction made by Dean's called "Choco-Riffic!", which I used to think contained neither milk nor chocolate, but apparently does after reading the label - there's at least some milk, and cocoa.
The added 'y' seems to have an alternate meaning: 'ish'. It should probably be read as "Now! More Chocolate-ish!"
I'm always skeptical when an ingredient name is modified to become a comparison instead. Chocolatey in no way means it has any chocolate at all in it. In the same way wines have "a hint of chocolate on the palate." It's a hint alright, but it's not chocolate. Only, wine descriptions aren't actively trying to trick you.
That's why a lot of popcorn is "Buttery" - it doesn't necessarily have butter in it at all. And it probably doesn't. In the same way "creamy peanut butter" doesn't have cream in it. The difference: the peanut butter description isn't actively trying to trick you.
This is absolutely not a new phenomenon in the slightest, companies across all industries are always messing with their products trying to reduce costs when possible. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
It may be more pronounced in times where consumers are more price-conscious, as companies try to raise/maintain profits without avoid raising prices -- hoping that budget minded consumers will accept this tradeoff more than in extravagant times.
I remember when Hershey changed the recipe for Reese's Cups, removing palm oil, and other ingredients which made it less of an oily peanut butter, and more dry and cake like. I understand (now) the palm oil concern, but boy did it really change the texture and taste.
Oreos getting rid of lard was a staggering change. Then partially hydrogenated vegetable oils got the boot, and whatever they started using in Oreos after that was absolutely vile. They've improved somewhat in the last few years, but they are not really Oreos.
I don't have soda (or sweet food) very often, but I do miss the taste (and rush) of real sugar. I've never tasted a reformulated product that comes close to the real thing.
So that news articles can bait people with a fear of not being up to date with the latest lingo, and also, so people have something to talk about while things fall apart around them.
The phenomenon of disregard for quality, and selling products with a negative value for an apparently low amount, is hitting the basics.
Recentmost experience: shoes. This friend of mine bought a new pair of shoes only days ago, and started having definite pains after a few days. So he opened them, which revealed that the soles were hollow, the thickness given by a form of honeycomb, in shape of a grid with large holes: he was hammering his heels on plastic blades, hidden by a thin soft buffer.
And some professionals confirm that build quality has greatly declined in general, even beyond this extreme example.
Shoes are probably on par with food in a ranking of basic needs - it makes sense to think that you will have a hard time obtaining food without a decent foot protection. And today, we are having problems in securing even this.
Note about that friend of mine, again: almost one week after having ditched the bad pair, and having worn it for five days, of relatively light walking, the pains created are still persisting: this to stress the notion of how bad an idea it is to make and sell harmful shoes.
Benjamin Moore did this with their paints in the past two years, and the colors are noticeably more dull now. The SDS (safety data sheet) for some of their most popular paints like Advance used to have the specific amount of 25% Titanium Dioxide, and they now list the range of 20-25%. From reading on the internet, this compound is the white base and also is in short supply these days. So now colors like Simply White are actually pretty dull and grayer now. You'll notice this easily if you put something with the new color up against the old color, where the old color will show as the brighter one.
Non intuitively (to me at least) this somewhat explains the proliferation of the dollar stores. These stores sell name brand products packaged in small quantities at a relatively low price, but high margin. Making each location much more profitable than the big box stores. Especially since each location typically only has one or two employees on duty most of the time.
Starbucks in my area has cut down on wifi speeds dramatically. All 3–4 stores I frequent have been slowed down. Wonder if locations in your area are like this.
It's funny being able to do mental arithmetic. I instinctively calculate the price per weight of almost every food product I buy, then I have to remind myself that most people don't do that.
It can be a pain to do that division but luckily the small label in the corner Usally has that. The one problem is the sale items don’t have the price per unit and you need a calculator.
This is a good test. If we truly are a capitalist economy then we’ll see competition enter and new products that sell quality offerings.
My prediction is that won’t happen. There’s been too much consolidation and efficiencies through scale that it’s impossible for a company to get founded to sell a toilet paper that’s not 20% thinner or any of the other examples mentioned.
On the upside at least companies are cheating us out of our money only and no longer selling us products that will kill us due to safety or poisoning issues. That’s progress.
Some product categories seem to have the middle of the market (quality wise) hollow out and disappear, so all you've got left is the low-end crap and high-end pricy versions, with no middle-range left.
One example: try to buy a nice metal or leather band for an Apple Watch. There's the low-end ones, which are 4$ on alibaba re-sold on Amazon for 12$. There's the X00$ Apple-made first party ones, and that's it. Nobody's making a really nice ~45$ leather band without the Apple name (that's obviously not just the cheap alibaba ones with a better marketing site).
The market has to value quality offerings enough to pay for it. There are already more expensive quality options, but most people prefer cheaper but good enough.
The market requires an educated consumer. The article made it clear that these product changes are occurring unannounced.
So of course I’m going to buy the cheaper 1000 sheet 2-ply toilet paper because according to the specs they are the same product, just one is cheaper. Toilet paper isn’t sold by weight to consumers. Even sheet sizes can be different between brands. And now 2-ply is no longer a meaningful attribute.
Unannounced, but not unnoticed. The article is about how consumers are complaining about the changes, with many saying they will switch to different brands, as you would predict.
I mean, nobody who cares about quality toilet paper was using Scott in the first place. There are many options that market themselves as being higher quality, but more expensive.
