The incredible shrinking groceries
- August 13, 2008 12:44 PM |
- By Kevin Yarr
by Kevin yarr, CBCNews.ca
A few months ago I grabbed my regular cheese purchase out of the grocery store fridge and it seemed thin in my hand. It was not my imagination. It was a smaller package, but the price remained the same.
I am not the only one to have noticed this trend.
Actually, it never even occurred to me at the time that this might be a trend, but it did occur to researchers at Consumer Reports, and in their October issue they will detail an assortment of shrinking food products. They released a teaser this week: tuna cans reduced from 200 to 170 grams, coffee from 454 to 326 grams, ice cream from 2 litres to 1.66 litres.
I'm not a fan of paying the same for less but I still see a bright side to this trend, because there is a parallel trend in restaurants - one that's moving in the opposite direction. Portion sizes at restaurants are getting bigger.
The movie Super Size Me killed a marketing promotion at McDonald's, and the Biggie label at Wendy's, but it appears to have done nothing to reduce actual serving sizes. A Biggie soda was 32 ounces; the more innocuously-named large is 42 ounces.
Drive over to Burger King for something appropriate to go with that, the triple whopper with cheese. With 12 ounces of beef, it's enough protein for two days.
Nutritionist Lisa R. Young has written that fast food chains are upping the portions because it's an easy way to give the impression of good value. Food is cheap relative to infrastructure and labour.
I remember when the three-ounce Big Mac was considered a large burger. I get a little sick thinking about what some people are wolfing back in a sitting now.
Personal reactions aside, large restaurant portions (and I don't think fast food chains are the only culprits) are pretty well established to be a contributor to the North American obesity epidemic. Maybe if consumers find they have to put two cans of tuna on a sandwich to make it look like the one at the sandwich bar down the street, they'll start to clue in that perhaps these larger portions aren't the great value they first appear to be.
Seen an incredible shrinking product or an unbelievably-oversized portion? Leave a comment and let us know.
About the Authors
- Elizabeth Bridge is a producer with CBC's Digital Archives project. She got her start in the kitchen baking brownies and making fudge but is still trying to get pastry right.
- Andrea Chiu
is an associate producer at CBC Radio Digital. Though she loves to eat, cook and discuss food,
don't ask her to bake. It never turns out well. She tweets as @TOfoodie on Twitter and organizes food and wine events in Toronto called FoodieMeet.
- Amber Hildebrandt
works for CBCNews.ca in Toronto. Growing up on a farm in Manitoba, she acquired an insatiable appetite, but it was during a stint in Japan that she developed her discerning tastebuds and foodie ways.
- Tara Kimura
is a multimedia producer for CBCNews.ca.
- Andree Lau
is a CBC web reporter in Calgary. Her journalism career includes seven years as a CBC-TV reporter. Her own blog called "are you gonna eat that?" chronicles her eating adventures (including sampling snake and camel hoof tendon).
- Jessica Wong
is a CBCNews.ca writer who loves to eat and cook, as well as discuss, read and watch programming about food, sometimes all at once.
- Kevin Yarr
, CBCNews.ca's writer in Prince Edward Island, wrote about food and beer for national and regional magazines before joining the CBC. He acquired a desire for new tastes on his first trip to Europe, and an appreciation of eating locally and in season when he finally settled down on P.E.I.
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Comments (15)
Yes ! I've been noticing this for years...
Toilet-paper....coffee to name a few
Do they think we're so dumb that we don't notice?
Astro Yogourt a while ago (years?) came in 125g 12-packs, but I now see that each container has shrunk by 25g to 100g - same price. Why the substantial reduction in size and no corresponding drop in price? Any guesses?
You are right! We have noticed this trend as well. It seems very underhanded to me.It comes as no suprise though.These companies make millions of extra dollars every year by changing the size and weight of our food. Meat producers have been injecting water into their products for years to make them heavier. My family left the city for the country life to put the control back in our side. We now grow and raise about 75% of our own food. Its chemical free and our family gets to spend great time together while we take care of things. Sometimes the old way to do things is the better way.
Trying to cut costs at the grocery store, we have continued to resist mass produced convenience foods. Thus, for the last few years, have been making my own muffins, amongst many other healthy and much more economical meals and snacks.
I was never so ticked to see that the packages of paper muffin liners had risen by 50% in price and fallen by 25% in volume.
Now paper muffin liners are a luxury??????
The real crime in reducing quantities while price is unchanged is that the consumer is being ripped off. I have been noticing this trend for years. For families, the annual food budget really climbs when that can of tuna just shrunk, along with the toothpaste, toilet paper roll, dish soap, coffee. You name it, the product used to be larger!
And what about all that increased packaging going to our land fills? Producers need to look at reducing packaging by making package quantities larger, not smaller.
Toilet paper is a blatant example. Rolls have been shrinking for years and now the DOUBLE roll is the same size as the singles used to be. The present single roll doesn't go far!
I'm not sure why everyone seems so surprised. Look around and see the price of everything going up.
Reducing package size at the same price is a form of inflation that won't cause as many consumers to change habits. The main problem for the knowing shopper of course is that they must buy 100% more to get that 25% extra they require, for example.
One of the reasons behind the latest shrinking of 'product sizes' is the current trend of rising oil prices. This in turn increases the price of production through a steady increase in transportation costs. Many corporations have thus decided to decrease product size as opposed to increase the overall cost. It is a less noticeable strategy at dealing with a shrinking profits.
The other day at my local convenience store I noticed a "new" chocolate/candy bar. It was labelled "light" or something similar and was obviously smaller than a regular $1 bar. I took the time to read the package information.. and it didn't lie, it really did only have half the calories of the regular bar but it was also LESS than half the weight.. hehe... sometimes it amazes me just how dumb marketers think I am.
At least for me, smaller portions are a good thing since I live on my own and I often can't finish an entire package of something before it goes bad. However, I realize I'm in the minority and this is definitely not an advantage for those with three tennage mouths to feed!
Its true of all products. Look at coke bottles, they used to be 600ml and now they are 591ml. Also chocolate bars. It is easier to make a product slightly smaller than to raise the price.
Cheese please! The most readily consumed food in our house is ADL cheddar cheese. At $10/ block from Sobey's, our 2 year old has it as a staple. She is not big on milk, but enjoys yogurt and cheese. I think we should purchase a dairy cow, milk it each day, and make our own cheese and yogurt....if only city bylaws would allow such pets!
Nobody mentioned the shrinking size of our number one staple - BREAD! Checked out the store-baked breads, rolls and buns lately. What they now call a loaf of Belgian Bread is currently the size of a sub bun. Oh yeah, it costs more too.
Just an aside on gas cost. When oil prices were going down we were told it took three months for it to be reflected at the pumps. This apparently because it takes that long for the cheaper oil to reach the pumps as fuel. But just the threat of a hurricane sends the per litre rate skyrocketing. They're getting it both ways. Talk about a double standard.
Shrinking toilet papeRolls takes the cake for consumer tomfoolery. Rattles around on the roller....absurd!!!
Fast food portions are definitely NOT getting bigger, been to Wendy's lately? The junior bacon cheeseburger has shrunk about 25% in the last 3 years, and there are plenty of other examples as well. Not to mention the prices keep going up while the portions shrink..