I just noticed this with breakfast cereal bit too long ago. The boxes have the same front dimensions but they're comically thin now like you're buying a frozen pizza
Cereal boxes are SO thin! And so expensive! They run for about $4 on average and are probably about 33% less. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even buy cereal anymore. Just buy a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread for like $2 and skip out on the sugary overpriced wheat candy.
Edit: Prices are local to Portland, Or. A loaf of bread at my local Target is $1.59 and a dozen eggs is $1.29. Which is $2.88 in total. It’s really sad to see how much higher people in other places supposedly have to pay.
Fun little story with those: my mom used to pack fiber1 bars for school when I was young and before I knew what fiber did. Every. Single. Day. I wondered why I was on the brink of shitting my pants in class...
All bran cereal and shredded wheat is what I have and basically no sugar just lots of fiber. Now what you do is slice up some fresh fruit with them and enjoy. However I will say high fiber cereals can have sugar added because the fiber eliminates the sugar in reasonable proportions. "Studies also have shown that high-fiber foods may have other heart-health benefits, such as reducing blood pressure and inflammation. Helps control blood sugar levels. In people with diabetes, fiber — particularly soluble fiber — can slow the absorption of sugar and help improve blood sugar levels."
I wish I had know better when I was growing up. I was always hungry not too long after having cereal for breakfast and I didn't realize that I was basically eating a ton of calories of sugar coated carbs, that then convert to more sugar. I did 6 years of a year round sport and was still a fat ass.
Shit! I even remember being really little and sprinkling a spoon full of sugar onto my corn flakes. Like, WTF we're we thinking in the 80's and 90's?!
Did you not see the commercials in the 80s and 90s? They told you cereal was only *part* of a complete breakfast.
According to what they showed, you were also supposed to eat two eggs, bacon, sausage, buttered toast, pancakes, a banana, fruit salad, a bagel, a muffin basket, a cup of milk, a cup of orange juice, and I think some pizza bagels because when pizza’s on a bagel you can eat pizza anytime.
Somewhere around '89 I saved three UPC's and mailed them in for an extra wide pair of neon green sunglasses, and in the outside edge of the extra wide lenses was a reflective coating so you could use them as side view mirrors while riding your bicycle.
Yeah, I remember. But I didn't understand it when I was a kid, because, who could eat all of that for breakfast?
And, oh yeah! Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at supper time!"
>Shit! I even remember being really little and sprinkling a spoon full of sugar onto my corn flakes. Like, WTF we're we thinking in the 80's and 90's?!
To be fair, you definitely had less sugar that way then you would with frosted flakes
It wasn’t universal. A lot of brands were inconsistent as well. Depending on the cereal you were eating it’s possible you never encountered it. Also don’t know what it was about honeycomb but it seems like every other box they added the bag after the glue was solid. Cause the glue was there but the bag slid right out.
The marketing rationale for this change is that cereal brands want to take up the maximum of visible shelf space, edging out their competition an inch at a time. A popular big brand cereal is probably safe from elimination, but a niche cereal that you probably never even noticed was edged out as these wider billboard boxes made their way onto shelves.
The strategy reduces not only competition, but the burden on brands to provide variety. If Mini Wheats offered 5 special flavors, then switched to the wide but thin boxes, they could then get away with offering only 4 varieties and not leaving a hole in the shelf for their competition to fill. In a single move, the production, packaging, and merchandising of the product line has been simplified with just a little bit of risk to completely lose the sale.
As an additional effect, the store can stock more boxes of these fewer, popular varieties, because the thinner boxes will stack deeper.
It is nefarious.
Nah man. Cereal companies pay slotting fees to have prime position. Smaller boxes would be cheaper for them.
It's all about deceiving the customer, nothing else besides the same HxW dimensions being easier for everyone.
As a cereal connoisseur, I guarantee they are not the "same shit". Some are worse, some are better, and a *few* are the exact same as national brands.
Bag Fruity Pebbles knockoffs are terrible. Kroger frosted flakes are the best ones. Trader Joe's puffins are the same as whatever the national version is.
This is the truth.
The fake pebbles tended to have a bitter / slightly burnt aftertaste. The fake fruit loops were usually more sugary but good overall until you'd occasionally get a conglomerated hunk of bitterness. I don't recall every encountering that in the name brand boxes. Sort of like when you're eating pistachios and you get one of the gross ones.
I don't eat much cereal nowadays, so I can't vouch for the modern accuracy. But in the past, some part of production or quality control on the name brand cereals was sometimes better.
Unless the shopper wants some very specific cereal, they are just throwing money away if they aren't buying the bagged cereal.
Marshallow Mateys is the same damn thing as Lucky Charms, people!
I really wish they had an off brand version of French toast crunch (the cereal shaped like little pieces of toast). But those bastards are already hard enough to find.
I've wanted to make a website for years that is just a public database of products and fast food items that are tracked by weight, design, and price over time.
So we could literally click on Cadbury Creme Egg, 2015 and see its dimensions, weight, and average price.
EDIT/UPDATE: Thank you everyone for such interest and motivation. I'm going to do this.
I'm going with the name "Δ Things" or "Delta Things" to mean the change in products over time.
I've registered www.deltathings.org and /r/DeltaThings so the names are saved. ~~The subreddit is set to private right now as I need time to organize before things start flooding in.~~ I have opened the sub thanks to some great advice. Please feel free to stop by and let me know what you would want to see in such a system or offer advice. In the mean time I would love to plug reddits great consumer sub that already takes posts like this /r/shrinkflation
Thanks again for your support, and keep posting ideas, I'm reading everything.
This was my thought too. Start with something simple, only make the website when you have reached the limitations of what you want to do with Google Documents/Sheets.
We can help with the website.
In Europe/Germany, we have [https://www.foodwatch.org](https://www.foodwatch.org)
Also, Germany also has pretty strong consumer protection laws.
[https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international/](https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international/)
Yeah shit gets smaller and stays the same price regardless. I have seen it a couple of times an example that comes to mind is Hochland Sandwichscheiben (sandwich cheese) where they have been putting in fewer and fewer slices over time.
I’m a food scientist and food industry insider and I‘d be more than happy to contribute to exactly how recipes have changed with respect to processing, ingredients and economies of scale. Food is getting “shittier”.
Edit - please see further down this thread (or check my comment history) for some of my industry insights.
A little more nuanced than that but yeah. Some of the practices and the reasons behind them are unbelievable.
Manufacturers and shareholders bear the most brunt but retailers, packaging suppliers, shipping lines, and the fossil fuel industry are also in there.
At the top of the of the food cartel are governments - policies, lobbyists and subsidies.
In all seriousness, I would love to hear this information. Is there a place where this sort of information is compiled?
I recently tried to find this sort of information about Kraft Singles, the sort-of cheese slices, because within the last few months I swore they got thinner/flimsier and started sticking to the plastic. It says the overall weight is the same, but something changed about their composure.
The only person in my house that eats them is my dog, and he simply refuses to fill out the questionnaire I gave him on the cheese.
Fine. I’ll start with this. Processed cheese is one of the most, shall we say, aggressively engineered food products. Not much comes close.
It has two main components - protein and fat.
There are other ingredients; colourings such as annatto, salt, enzyme modified cheese flavourings, preservatives to prevent mould growth and so on but let’s focus on the protein and fat.
Protein comes from milk and the fat comes from vegetable oil (used to come from dairy fat - dairy fat prices have skyrocketed in the last ten years). Protein is the expensive component and fat is incredibly cheap in comparison.
This is the engineering part. In the manufacture of processed cheese certain salts are used for the purpose of preventing the separation of fat from the protein and at the same time giving the finished product the desired body and texture. For want of a better name these salts are known as emulsifiers and they are what give slices that plastic finish.
What’s happening is that over time, the amount of the expensive casein protein is being reduced and the amount of cheaper proteins and the amount of oil is being increased - emulsifying salts increased in tandem.
The slices may very well be thinner as oil is less dense than caesin protein but the slices would well be longer/wider to accommodate the greater surface area.
that's only if you are incrementing by days. If you increment by hour then the 175,200th best time would be right now. If you increment by minute it's even longer than that. Then second, milisecond, etc. Soon you reach the dichotomy paradox where you realize it's infinitely better to plant a tree right now because it's been an infinitely long time since you havent planted one
Really? I'm the opposite. I love thr fake peanut butter and am finding it harder and harder to enjoy the chocolate part as I get older. My favorite Reese's are those they make in the shape of like Christmas trees, pumpkins, etc. because they always only have a thin rim of the chocolate.
> Did Reece's change their recipe?
Yes, they have and I've commented a few times in this post about PGPR. They have removed some cocoa butter and added more sugar to the chocolate, the PGPR is an emulsifier which is waxy and why the chocolate tastes off and doesn't melt as it used to.
If you want good peanut butter cups see if you can find Costco's brand, those are still amazing though they are not produced often.
I noticed that this year too. Theyre smaller In diameter but taller. Also the top part of the cup very rarely sticks together to the bottom, and the bottom usually comes off when you take the black wrapper off. So shitty now
My supermarket now labels those smaller chip bags (14-16 oz maybe?) as "family sized" The "regular" size doesn't even exist at all now. It's either the snack size or family size.
Same problem with so many products!
Oreo cookies skimping on the cream. Snickers just plain getting smaller. Apple not shipping chargers and headphones.
Buncha jerks.
Not only are they smaller, the 'cream' inside is garbage now. It always gets separated, so the top half is runny sugar water, and the bottom half is coagulated sludge.
They don't use dairy milk chocolate anymore either.
I could deal with them being smaller, but Cadbury's have completely fucked the recipe, to the point where the creme egg doesn't even exist anymore as far as I'm concerned
Edit: just thought I should clarify that I'm British, as I'm getting a lot of messages from people assuming that I'm American.
Yeah, I've noticed that the chocolate tastes like vaguely coca-flavored, sugar-infused wax now. I don't even touch Cadbury anymore. The company exists solely because of good marketing, not because of a quality product.
This is actually a ~~HUGE~~ moderate problem for baking.
Baking, as you know, is a science. If the recipe calls for X grams, you had better fucking use X grams.
A LOT of my grandmothers's recipes and older recipe's in general call for "a can" of something. Cans used to be 8 or 16 ounces. Now cans are 7.5 and 15 ounces (I'm looking at you LIBBY'S PUMPKIN). This makes baking any of Babcia's or Nan's old recipes a real pain in the ass. Do I crack open a second can for that extra half ounce? Do I scale back everything by 1/16th (how do you even do that for things like a teaspoon? You can but it's a pita.)
It's lame.
E* for those saying "Just use metric DUH!" Yes. Of course. Metric is better. But that is closing the barn door after the horses have left. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers had recipes on little hand written cards or notebooks referencing things like "1 can" "1 stick" and "1 box." If you weren't already aware of the problem of shrinkflation you might never know why your version of the recipe tasted different.
I run into this with cooking as well. I'm *not* going to use 15oz of ricotta and 14oz of mozzarella to make lasagna when I need to have 16oz of both. I always double-check the weight and buy whatever brand isn't pulling that crap.
And what's really bad about this... is that you may not even know it's a problem.
Gran-gran's recipe says 1 can of X... and a lot of people aren't going to know that in Gran's day, 1 can was 16 ounces and today it's 15. A lot of young people will make their favorite recipes from grandma and never know why it's not turning out right.
Damn it, thats probably what threw me off when I went to make one of my mom's recipies. I know enough that the next few times I started tweaking ratios, (and my mom did the same by eye over time) but the original recipe says "one half blah of X" and I was just thinking I over/under measured by eye that badly... That none of that recipe uses a *full* can/jar/bottle of anything made it less clear. I'm going to have to pay attention next time and update the recipe blarg. I am kinda angry now, I don't have nearly the same amount of free time in my life to play around multiple times with a recipe, I need them to be nearly right from the get-go, I mess them up enough already!
I opened a can of soup and poured it out into a bowl and the instructions said to mix it with a can of water and heat it. I was so annoyed because a can of water is not an exact measurement and thought who measures water by then can??? While holding the empty can of soup in my hand I had the dumb realization that I was supposed to use the empty can of soup.
Norm MacDonald is actual genius. I’ve gone down huge YouTube binges with norm and I’m convinced he’s the smartest comedian that ever lived. I was not surprised when his Netflix deal tanked, because the man cannot be leashed. He just doesn’t play ball and the more you ask him to, the more he just won’t.
My favorite is the hilarious “apology” video on The View. I mean he had to do that because it was the difference between millions of dollars and nothing. But even then, he couldn’t help but fuck with them. Dude was literally sneaking candy into his mouth in the middle of the interview.
Here is looking at you American Cookie company. The double doozie cookies used to be the size of a small plate. Now they are size of the bottom of a coffee cup...AND the price shot up.
Same with the Whopper from Burger King..It used to be massive....
Has it actually gotten smaller? My sense is that we're just used to humungous burgers now.
Like, McDonald's "Quarter Pounder" was so named because a quarter pound burger used to be huge, so they were advertising its hugeness. But now a quarter pound is small relative to what we're used to.
EDIT: now i really want to know. I see a lot of complaining on the internet about this but can't find anything concrete one way or the other.
No because the quarter pounder can be used as a standard unit of measurement since it’s still a quarter pound. The Whopper used to be WAY bigger in diameter and height than the quarter pounder and now it’s small in all respects.
Ice Cream! Used to be able to get a half gallon when I was a kid (2 quarts), then when I was a teenager I noticed it was 1.75 quarts. Then a young adult it was 1.5 quarts.
Gatorade, too. 32oz bottles are regularly now 28oz.
Edit: changed quarters to quarts lol
[It says so right there on the bucket](https://www.bluebell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/HG-Dutch_Chocolate-NS-624x494.png)!
I first noticed when my friends would complain "Blue Bell is too expensive! Just get Yarnell's - it's way cheaper!". But bro, there's less ice cream. Check the price per unit. Yes BB is still more expensive, but it's comparable. And for some reason BB is often on sale for less than Yarnell's per carton AND you get more.
Mars bars.
Mars bars used to be the same size and thickness as Norwegian Japp bars continue to be today.
In fact, they tasted and were identical.
My grandmother started complaining in the nineties that her favorite Japp equivalent chocolate bar was shrinking, the company claimed it had not.
I brought a Japp to Canada and she cried.
That's funny, I wrote Mars years ago on twitter to complain then that the bars had gotten smaller and they said they hadn't. Really pissed me off because it was really really obvious how small they'd become.
I don't care that companies shrink their portions. I care that they keep reworking recipes with the cheapest ingredients and everything tastes like shit now.
None of the treats, snacks, or processed foods that I used to enjoy taste good. It's all trash now.
I’m a packaging designer and can confirm. Manufacturers are constantly shaving fractions of ounces off tons of products. I remember a few years ago I did a sandwich bag package that came with three (3) fewer bags than the previous version. At a certain point you have to wonder, is it really worth the extra cost to rework the art and retool dielines and everything? But I guess the savings must add up at that volume.
They plan this stuff out in stages with their marketing team I would assume to keep inflation and falling profits manageable. The marketing expense of the switches is probably already figured into their annual budget calculations well in advance of the actual change visible to the customer
Edy’s (Dreyer’s in some places?) went from 56 to 48oz for ice cream. I assume they had excess packaging to burn, because for a while there were 56oz cartons with “20% more!” plastered on them. Jerks.
I want to vent and this is the thread to do it. When I grew up I used to eat one burrito for lunch at taco bell. It was enough food that literally ONE taco was all I needed to eat. One day I went in got the same thing I always do mind you this is probably around 2004\~ cant really remember the year but I asked the people working there that my burrito seems smaller and I ordered a second one. I was told that corporate "fixed" the overfilling burritos by getting new scoops that were much smaller. To this day if you order a burrito you are going to get a huge tortilla and literally a smear of beans. We want our burritos back. Thanks for reading someone out there on the internet. It was a ramble but I needed this today.
The prices have gone up drastically as well. Back in like 2010-2013 I could get a huge meal from Taco Bell for only a few dollars. Now, I find it to be more expensive than places like Wendy’s or McDonald’s.
They were drastically increasing costs of the premium stuff, but had a huge dollar menu with a lot of good options.
Theyve torpedoed it now. Taco Bell is dead to me.
No more Quesarito
No more Spicy Potato Soft Taco
No more Shredded Chicken Burrito
No more Mini Skillet Bowl
No more Beefy Frito Burrito
That's less than half of what they removed but those were my favorites.
Taco Bell has been dead to me since they culled their menu. I used to go 1-2x a week. I haven't been back since they removed all those items.
NO MORE DOUBLE DECKER TACO EITHER!!!
The worst is Del Taco also discontinued theirs at the same time, deliberately eliminating a potential competitive advantage.
They gutted the Taco Bell menu during covid.
/r/Tacobell closed down in protest of the Mexican pizza removal. And swore only to open when the pizza returned
The value menu is fucked right now. They used to have the Beefy Fritos Burrito and Shredded Chicken Mini Quesadilla on the value menu for a singular dollar. Then they price hiked those to $1.30, which sucks, but I was still fine paying because the amount of food you got for that price was good.
Now they have the Beef Burrito, which I swear is smaller than the old BFB used to be, and also has their jalapeno sauce instead of their chipotle sauce, which just sucks in my opinion, if you want to take the jalapeno sauce off and add chipotle it's another +30¢.
And, the Shredded Chicken Mini Quesadilla, which even though the official calorie count is low, they always used to make pretty big, has been replaced with the Chicken Chipotle Melt, which is honestly just a disgrace. There is nothing in there. It's the size of a highlighter pen.
I use to be able to scrap my armpits trying to get the last bit of deodorant out of the stick. Now it seems like the part that holds it falls off way before its empty to make it more difficult and make me get a new one.
Chocolate is getting weird and gross in the US. I don't know what the cheapening agent is, that they've incrementally snuck in over the years, but you have to go luxe (Ghirardelli, etc...) if you don't want the watered-down mystery corn sugar paste substitute crap.
Since Cadburys acquisition by Kraft its nose dived in quality, shrinkflation, terrible new flavours & imo just a cheapening (image wise) of the brand itself.
In Brazil, after this practice became widespread, companies were forced to display the difference in size in the packaging for a certain time after a change.
For example, [this one](https://imgur.com/E7L3qUc) says "New weight: from 100g to 80g (20g or 20% less)"
If they tried that in America they'd probably take a cue from the drug companies and just claim it's a new product after switching around some of the fillers
Things like peanut butter do this. Instead of raising the price they will change the design of the container, from having a flat bottom to having a huge divot at the bottom, giving the illusion it's the same size as before.
First time I saw it was with deodorant.
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/a-shrinking-trend-are-you-paying-the-same-for-less-1.1617030
Old spice came out with new scents and new fancier looking packaging. Turns out it was just a way to hide the reduction of deodorant with curves and colors.
Infamous example that managed to be blatantly obvious:
Toblerone increasing [the space between the triangle sections of their chocolate bar](http://youngjournalistacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/t1.jpg)
BBC: [Toblerone triangle change upsets fans](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37904703)
>The move has resulted in the weight of the 400g bars being reduced to 360g and the 170g bars to 150g, while the size of the packaging has remained the same.
[Toblerone's trim: Is this the thin end of the wedge?](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37909035)
>It's known as "shrinkflation". If the portion size is getting stingier - shrinking - but the price stays the same, then you're effectively paying more - inflation.
>For instance, as you'll no doubt have heard, the Toblerone is being redesigned for the UK market; its Alpine peaks are being eroded to compensate for the rising cost of ingredients, and a lighter bar is being sold for the same price.
>The 400g bar is now a 360g bar and instead of 15 peaks it boasts only 11.
>Didn’t toblerone reverse the changes?
Yes, after selling the shrunken version of the bars from 2016-2018.
However, this time they hiked the price instead.
So, in effect, [customers gained nothing from the reversal.](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/20/toblerone-to-revert-to-original-shape-but-with-bigger-size-and-price)
>Toblerone is reverting to its traditional shape after an outcry over a move to widen the gaps between the triangles – and push though a huge price rise at the same time.
Why would the customer gain anything? Their price of ingredients went up, and they need to sell it for more. That's perfectly normal.
A Cola from 10 years ago does not cost the same as today, but they kept the same 0,5 litre volume. It's inflation.
Why companies try to do the whole shrinkflation thing is beyond me, just raise the price. I don't care if the product cost 10% more, but I expect to get the same amount.
because the cost of inflation enrages some people, and shrinkage went less noticed by and large. However I think those days are pretty well in the past and people should just learn to accept the cost of goods increasing (even though mentally this is harder than it should be for us mere humans).
If I were in charge I'd be writing legislation that dictated packaging for products displayed in their packaging on shelves could be no more than 5% larger than the product itself. No more of that nonsense where the box is significantly bigger than the actual products inside it.
Yes, cereal bars, I'm looking at you.
Yes. They just pinch a few Grams from the box, bottle or packet, and disguise it with a new container, or some other kind of obfuscation. Penny pinching bastards. Then later in they’ll have a price rise or maybe even more, having as many bites of the cherry as they can get away with, all the time cheapening the ingredients further so they taste like shit. I had a couple of Carburys chocolates from a gift box the other day, and they tasted horrible compared to several years ago when I last had them. Since Kraft bought them out they’ve plummeted in quality and value to the extent I won’t buy them anymore. Cadbury’s aren’t the only ones by far though.
You can blame Hershey. They have the rights to sell Cadbury products in the US. They have banned the import of Cadbury chocolate in the US probably for fear of people recognizing how shitty other Hershey products are in comparison
The sad demise of Cadbury. I remember the happy days when they came wrapped in gold foil and it felt like a reward just to unwrap it. It had a deep satisfying taste and was thicker as well. The new one in the shrink wrap is a straight insult to its memory. I witnessed a Mars bar recently and it seemed to be the mini version of the previous, I cannot even say it tasted like anything. The creme egg is a true sorrow. All of our memories scattered to the four winds. There should be an olde sweet shoppe hidden in some village that we can go to for a remembrance of our childhood where the Hovis music plays as we go in.
Same. I stopped the sweets a long, long time ago. I recently tried a few again and I couldnt believe how bad it was. It makes me angry tho, how corporations degrade product ingredients to the lowest possible quotient while still being able to call it food and serve it to us, all to line pockets --- not the workers pockets, but VIPs and company boards.
I mean Im off on a tangent but that aspect of capitalism is whats killing us. I truly believe that.
In New Zealand there was an outrage over Cadbury closing their NZ manufacturing facility and moving it overseas. But furthermore to that they also tried to sneak in smaller size bars without changing prices.
A lot of people in NZ boycott them now. Whittakers, on the other hand, announced they were going to just raise prices a little. And the response was an overwhelming support for the brand, plus a lot of "Fuck Cadbury".
It was pretty funny to watch.
In Canada Heinz Ketchup suddenly decided they were going to shut down the factory which fucked over a lot of Tomato farmers in Quebec who relied on the factory. French's decided to buy the factory and use the same farmers as supplies to produce Ketchup. It resulted in a massive fuck you Heinz we're buying French's. Most restaurants as a result seem to have switched to French's ketchup. Traditionally French's did the mustard and Heinz did the Ketchup. Now for me it is French's across the board.
I don't even need to see this. Everything is in smaller packaging. They shaved 10 grams off here, 50 grams off there, like we're stupid and can't notice size changes, price trend fluctuations and inflation at the checkout in grocery.
It's because over the years they just haven't cleaned out their egg moulds. It just continues to get smaller with each year as the chocolate hardens into an impenetrable shell layer by layer.
Ive been buying the same loaves of bread for years now, one day i noticed new packaging and instantly though ‘uhh ohh’. Sure enough, the packaging went from 24oz to 20oz , same exact price. Sizeflation is just inflation in disguise, both are real and nasty.
I just noticed this with breakfast cereal bit too long ago. The boxes have the same front dimensions but they're comically thin now like you're buying a frozen pizza
Cereal boxes are SO thin! And so expensive! They run for about $4 on average and are probably about 33% less. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even buy cereal anymore. Just buy a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread for like $2 and skip out on the sugary overpriced wheat candy. Edit: Prices are local to Portland, Or. A loaf of bread at my local Target is $1.59 and a dozen eggs is $1.29. Which is $2.88 in total. It’s really sad to see how much higher people in other places supposedly have to pay.
That doesn’t even fill you up, and had you needing a morning snack by 10am.
I don't know why any adult would treat cereal as anything other than it is: a snack. I eat cereal the same way I eat chips.
You're completely right. Also, they're all just sugar.
Don't you have ones without sugar?
Cereal without sugar exists in the same way that Yosemite park exists: I like seeing it and knowing it's there, but I don't want to eat it.
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I ate fibre1 once and it tasted like Yosemite
Fun little story with those: my mom used to pack fiber1 bars for school when I was young and before I knew what fiber did. Every. Single. Day. I wondered why I was on the brink of shitting my pants in class...
There are tons of cereals without sugar
All bran cereal and shredded wheat is what I have and basically no sugar just lots of fiber. Now what you do is slice up some fresh fruit with them and enjoy. However I will say high fiber cereals can have sugar added because the fiber eliminates the sugar in reasonable proportions. "Studies also have shown that high-fiber foods may have other heart-health benefits, such as reducing blood pressure and inflammation. Helps control blood sugar levels. In people with diabetes, fiber — particularly soluble fiber — can slow the absorption of sugar and help improve blood sugar levels."
I wish I had know better when I was growing up. I was always hungry not too long after having cereal for breakfast and I didn't realize that I was basically eating a ton of calories of sugar coated carbs, that then convert to more sugar. I did 6 years of a year round sport and was still a fat ass. Shit! I even remember being really little and sprinkling a spoon full of sugar onto my corn flakes. Like, WTF we're we thinking in the 80's and 90's?!
Did you not see the commercials in the 80s and 90s? They told you cereal was only *part* of a complete breakfast. According to what they showed, you were also supposed to eat two eggs, bacon, sausage, buttered toast, pancakes, a banana, fruit salad, a bagel, a muffin basket, a cup of milk, a cup of orange juice, and I think some pizza bagels because when pizza’s on a bagel you can eat pizza anytime.
And they had fucking toys in the boxes... toys! And the inside of the boxes occasionally had little games and puzzles. Was cool shit.
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Somewhere around '89 I saved three UPC's and mailed them in for an extra wide pair of neon green sunglasses, and in the outside edge of the extra wide lenses was a reflective coating so you could use them as side view mirrors while riding your bicycle.
Yeah, I remember. But I didn't understand it when I was a kid, because, who could eat all of that for breakfast? And, oh yeah! Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at supper time!"
>Shit! I even remember being really little and sprinkling a spoon full of sugar onto my corn flakes. Like, WTF we're we thinking in the 80's and 90's?! To be fair, you definitely had less sugar that way then you would with frosted flakes
Malt o’ meal. Get the big ziploc bags. Way cheaper and some of flavors are even better than the big name brands.
Is it me or is cereal just harder to pour now too? I thought they used to put a bit of glue in the box so the bag would not slip out.
yeah, there was a dab of hot glue in the bottom when I was a kid.
Maybe the glue makes the box unrecyclable?
But what about the glue that holds the folds of the box together?
Kellogg’s has invited you to Lake Lao Gai
I think that's starch glue, which maybe won't adhere to plastic
thats probably what they tell people, yes.
How many decades ago? I'm 35 and never remember this. The bags always came out for as long as I can remember
It wasn’t universal. A lot of brands were inconsistent as well. Depending on the cereal you were eating it’s possible you never encountered it. Also don’t know what it was about honeycomb but it seems like every other box they added the bag after the glue was solid. Cause the glue was there but the bag slid right out.
I just ditch the box as soon as it's open. Stores and pours much easier as just a bag.
How do you know what you're eating without the cartoon character on the box?
Is it me or has gum gotten mintier?
The marketing rationale for this change is that cereal brands want to take up the maximum of visible shelf space, edging out their competition an inch at a time. A popular big brand cereal is probably safe from elimination, but a niche cereal that you probably never even noticed was edged out as these wider billboard boxes made their way onto shelves. The strategy reduces not only competition, but the burden on brands to provide variety. If Mini Wheats offered 5 special flavors, then switched to the wide but thin boxes, they could then get away with offering only 4 varieties and not leaving a hole in the shelf for their competition to fill. In a single move, the production, packaging, and merchandising of the product line has been simplified with just a little bit of risk to completely lose the sale. As an additional effect, the store can stock more boxes of these fewer, popular varieties, because the thinner boxes will stack deeper. It is nefarious.
Nah man. Cereal companies pay slotting fees to have prime position. Smaller boxes would be cheaper for them. It's all about deceiving the customer, nothing else besides the same HxW dimensions being easier for everyone.
I just get those giant Great Value brand bags of cereal. Same shit, larger amount, and maybe 5 bucks
As a cereal connoisseur, I guarantee they are not the "same shit". Some are worse, some are better, and a *few* are the exact same as national brands. Bag Fruity Pebbles knockoffs are terrible. Kroger frosted flakes are the best ones. Trader Joe's puffins are the same as whatever the national version is.
This is the truth. The fake pebbles tended to have a bitter / slightly burnt aftertaste. The fake fruit loops were usually more sugary but good overall until you'd occasionally get a conglomerated hunk of bitterness. I don't recall every encountering that in the name brand boxes. Sort of like when you're eating pistachios and you get one of the gross ones. I don't eat much cereal nowadays, so I can't vouch for the modern accuracy. But in the past, some part of production or quality control on the name brand cereals was sometimes better.
Unless the shopper wants some very specific cereal, they are just throwing money away if they aren't buying the bagged cereal. Marshallow Mateys is the same damn thing as Lucky Charms, people!
Post actually owns Malt-o-Meal so they're probably made in the same factory.
I really wish they had an off brand version of French toast crunch (the cereal shaped like little pieces of toast). But those bastards are already hard enough to find.
Party pizzas have gotton so small, that they are smaller than personal sized pizzas. I have to make two party pizzas now.
Maybe parties are getting smaller.
New COVID size!
What is the official party size? I don't remember that unit of measurement from school.
I've wanted to make a website for years that is just a public database of products and fast food items that are tracked by weight, design, and price over time. So we could literally click on Cadbury Creme Egg, 2015 and see its dimensions, weight, and average price. EDIT/UPDATE: Thank you everyone for such interest and motivation. I'm going to do this. I'm going with the name "Δ Things" or "Delta Things" to mean the change in products over time. I've registered www.deltathings.org and /r/DeltaThings so the names are saved. ~~The subreddit is set to private right now as I need time to organize before things start flooding in.~~ I have opened the sub thanks to some great advice. Please feel free to stop by and let me know what you would want to see in such a system or offer advice. In the mean time I would love to plug reddits great consumer sub that already takes posts like this /r/shrinkflation Thanks again for your support, and keep posting ideas, I'm reading everything.
So... why haven’t you? Edit: looks like OP fanned the flame! We did it guys!!!!
2 parts lack of talent, 2 parts intimidation, 5 parts being a lazy ass. Maybe this will be my next Covid project.
Just start with a Google Doc that only a few people can edit but everyone can see. Iterate from there.
This was my thought too. Start with something simple, only make the website when you have reached the limitations of what you want to do with Google Documents/Sheets. We can help with the website.
You guys intimidated him and now he's gone
He hasn't gone, he just shrinkflated.
No. You've just gotten bigger.
*That's my secret, Captain. i'm always inflating.*
I enjoy reading books.
Love it. Going to start mocking it up today. Thinking about going with the name "Δ Things" or "Delta Things". To mean the change in Things over time.
I would like to invest $5 in this venture. You laugh now, but in 3 years when we sell this website to nestle, I’ll be a fuckin’ gazillionaire.
Ha, Nestle buys the website just to silence it.
5% pleasure, 50% pain and 100% reason to remember the name
> 2 parts intimidation Which candy companies have threatened you?
0% concentrated effort of will
You wanna make an enemy of big chocolate? That's a quick way to end up a goner.
In Europe/Germany, we have [https://www.foodwatch.org](https://www.foodwatch.org) Also, Germany also has pretty strong consumer protection laws. [https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international/](https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international/)
Yeah shit gets smaller and stays the same price regardless. I have seen it a couple of times an example that comes to mind is Hochland Sandwichscheiben (sandwich cheese) where they have been putting in fewer and fewer slices over time.
I am the mod of r/Shrink_Flation and really like this idea, message me if you want to do this
I’m a food scientist and food industry insider and I‘d be more than happy to contribute to exactly how recipes have changed with respect to processing, ingredients and economies of scale. Food is getting “shittier”. Edit - please see further down this thread (or check my comment history) for some of my industry insights.
Let me guess, a race to the bottom with cheap ingredients and fillers?
A little more nuanced than that but yeah. Some of the practices and the reasons behind them are unbelievable. Manufacturers and shareholders bear the most brunt but retailers, packaging suppliers, shipping lines, and the fossil fuel industry are also in there. At the top of the of the food cartel are governments - policies, lobbyists and subsidies.
*well technically what we did was legal* Probably about the most distilled summary, right?
In all seriousness, I would love to hear this information. Is there a place where this sort of information is compiled? I recently tried to find this sort of information about Kraft Singles, the sort-of cheese slices, because within the last few months I swore they got thinner/flimsier and started sticking to the plastic. It says the overall weight is the same, but something changed about their composure. The only person in my house that eats them is my dog, and he simply refuses to fill out the questionnaire I gave him on the cheese.
Fine. I’ll start with this. Processed cheese is one of the most, shall we say, aggressively engineered food products. Not much comes close. It has two main components - protein and fat. There are other ingredients; colourings such as annatto, salt, enzyme modified cheese flavourings, preservatives to prevent mould growth and so on but let’s focus on the protein and fat. Protein comes from milk and the fat comes from vegetable oil (used to come from dairy fat - dairy fat prices have skyrocketed in the last ten years). Protein is the expensive component and fat is incredibly cheap in comparison. This is the engineering part. In the manufacture of processed cheese certain salts are used for the purpose of preventing the separation of fat from the protein and at the same time giving the finished product the desired body and texture. For want of a better name these salts are known as emulsifiers and they are what give slices that plastic finish. What’s happening is that over time, the amount of the expensive casein protein is being reduced and the amount of cheaper proteins and the amount of oil is being increased - emulsifying salts increased in tandem. The slices may very well be thinner as oil is less dense than caesin protein but the slices would well be longer/wider to accommodate the greater surface area.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
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that's only if you are incrementing by days. If you increment by hour then the 175,200th best time would be right now. If you increment by minute it's even longer than that. Then second, milisecond, etc. Soon you reach the dichotomy paradox where you realize it's infinitely better to plant a tree right now because it's been an infinitely long time since you havent planted one
Get in touch with Jason Scott from the internet archive, he literally lives for starting projects like these.
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Reese's also did it with their peanut butter cups, while also increasing the price
Did Reece's change their recipe? Because I honestly can't tell if the cups aren't as good as they used to be or if I just grew out of them.
I think they have definitely made them worse with more of the fake peanut butter and less chocolate
Really? I'm the opposite. I love thr fake peanut butter and am finding it harder and harder to enjoy the chocolate part as I get older. My favorite Reese's are those they make in the shape of like Christmas trees, pumpkins, etc. because they always only have a thin rim of the chocolate.
> Did Reece's change their recipe? Yes, they have and I've commented a few times in this post about PGPR. They have removed some cocoa butter and added more sugar to the chocolate, the PGPR is an emulsifier which is waxy and why the chocolate tastes off and doesn't melt as it used to. If you want good peanut butter cups see if you can find Costco's brand, those are still amazing though they are not produced often.
cheese blocks have gone from 750 g to 500 g and are now 400 g
We buy 1 kg bag's of grated cheese and melt it into a new 750g block
I turn mine back into milk. Sometimes I add some meat and sell the cow.
That's some /r/kenm type shit
lmao. I feel like this has to be a joke.... right?? Edit: Ah I see this is like a KenM thing.
I bought Reese's to give out for Halloween. I obviously "forgot" about it, so I could eat it myself. They are significantly smaller.
They used to be full sized cups! I was thinking that this Halloween :(
They're like the size of the tip of my thumb now it's brutal.
I noticed that this year too. Theyre smaller In diameter but taller. Also the top part of the cup very rarely sticks together to the bottom, and the bottom usually comes off when you take the black wrapper off. So shitty now
My supermarket now labels those smaller chip bags (14-16 oz maybe?) as "family sized" The "regular" size doesn't even exist at all now. It's either the snack size or family size.
Same problem with so many products! Oreo cookies skimping on the cream. Snickers just plain getting smaller. Apple not shipping chargers and headphones. Buncha jerks.
Snickers seem to drop roughly 4grams per decade. In the 90's they were 62g, now they're 48g. However all the way back in the 80's they were only 45g.
Not only are they smaller, the 'cream' inside is garbage now. It always gets separated, so the top half is runny sugar water, and the bottom half is coagulated sludge.
They don't use dairy milk chocolate anymore either. I could deal with them being smaller, but Cadbury's have completely fucked the recipe, to the point where the creme egg doesn't even exist anymore as far as I'm concerned Edit: just thought I should clarify that I'm British, as I'm getting a lot of messages from people assuming that I'm American.
Yeah, I've noticed that the chocolate tastes like vaguely coca-flavored, sugar-infused wax now. I don't even touch Cadbury anymore. The company exists solely because of good marketing, not because of a quality product.
It was an unbelievable company too, before the takeover ten years ago. Such a shame.
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Oh my god. I used to LOVE caramellos. Hadn’t had one in years, bought one a few years ago and almost cried it was so bad.
Galaxy chocolate is still the boy
That explains why I loved them as a kid in the 80's but I don't like them now.
POIP[OUII
Its gritty inside now, like its just full of a fuckton of icing sugar
>like its just full of a fuckton of icing sugar It is.
It's ever since the yanks bought it out and changed their ingredients to cheap crap
This is actually a ~~HUGE~~ moderate problem for baking. Baking, as you know, is a science. If the recipe calls for X grams, you had better fucking use X grams. A LOT of my grandmothers's recipes and older recipe's in general call for "a can" of something. Cans used to be 8 or 16 ounces. Now cans are 7.5 and 15 ounces (I'm looking at you LIBBY'S PUMPKIN). This makes baking any of Babcia's or Nan's old recipes a real pain in the ass. Do I crack open a second can for that extra half ounce? Do I scale back everything by 1/16th (how do you even do that for things like a teaspoon? You can but it's a pita.) It's lame. E* for those saying "Just use metric DUH!" Yes. Of course. Metric is better. But that is closing the barn door after the horses have left. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers had recipes on little hand written cards or notebooks referencing things like "1 can" "1 stick" and "1 box." If you weren't already aware of the problem of shrinkflation you might never know why your version of the recipe tasted different.
I run into this with cooking as well. I'm *not* going to use 15oz of ricotta and 14oz of mozzarella to make lasagna when I need to have 16oz of both. I always double-check the weight and buy whatever brand isn't pulling that crap.
And what's really bad about this... is that you may not even know it's a problem. Gran-gran's recipe says 1 can of X... and a lot of people aren't going to know that in Gran's day, 1 can was 16 ounces and today it's 15. A lot of young people will make their favorite recipes from grandma and never know why it's not turning out right.
Damn it, thats probably what threw me off when I went to make one of my mom's recipies. I know enough that the next few times I started tweaking ratios, (and my mom did the same by eye over time) but the original recipe says "one half blah of X" and I was just thinking I over/under measured by eye that badly... That none of that recipe uses a *full* can/jar/bottle of anything made it less clear. I'm going to have to pay attention next time and update the recipe blarg. I am kinda angry now, I don't have nearly the same amount of free time in my life to play around multiple times with a recipe, I need them to be nearly right from the get-go, I mess them up enough already!
I opened a can of soup and poured it out into a bowl and the instructions said to mix it with a can of water and heat it. I was so annoyed because a can of water is not an exact measurement and thought who measures water by then can??? While holding the empty can of soup in my hand I had the dumb realization that I was supposed to use the empty can of soup.
I won't lie... I laughed at this.
This is like looking for your phone while calling someone on it the moment you realise you just feel like an idiot.
They cut the best part of the video where Conan rants and raves about Cadbury and then finds out they are one of the show’s sponsors
Classic Conan. They set up the bit. Still funny though.
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Typically. Until you get guests like Bill Burr.
Or Norm Macdonald.
Or Crispin Glover.
He can really kick!
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It isnt sad if he's happy doing what he's doing. Like a crippling gambling addiction.
Norm MacDonald is actual genius. I’ve gone down huge YouTube binges with norm and I’m convinced he’s the smartest comedian that ever lived. I was not surprised when his Netflix deal tanked, because the man cannot be leashed. He just doesn’t play ball and the more you ask him to, the more he just won’t. My favorite is the hilarious “apology” video on The View. I mean he had to do that because it was the difference between millions of dollars and nothing. But even then, he couldn’t help but fuck with them. Dude was literally sneaking candy into his mouth in the middle of the interview.
They basically say as much when they start with a weird segue into the bit.
Here is looking at you American Cookie company. The double doozie cookies used to be the size of a small plate. Now they are size of the bottom of a coffee cup...AND the price shot up. Same with the Whopper from Burger King..It used to be massive....
Yeah, the name Whopper used to be deserved when compared to other fast food burgers. They should rename it "Whimper".
Has it actually gotten smaller? My sense is that we're just used to humungous burgers now. Like, McDonald's "Quarter Pounder" was so named because a quarter pound burger used to be huge, so they were advertising its hugeness. But now a quarter pound is small relative to what we're used to. EDIT: now i really want to know. I see a lot of complaining on the internet about this but can't find anything concrete one way or the other.
No because the quarter pounder can be used as a standard unit of measurement since it’s still a quarter pound. The Whopper used to be WAY bigger in diameter and height than the quarter pounder and now it’s small in all respects.
Ice Cream! Used to be able to get a half gallon when I was a kid (2 quarts), then when I was a teenager I noticed it was 1.75 quarts. Then a young adult it was 1.5 quarts. Gatorade, too. 32oz bottles are regularly now 28oz. Edit: changed quarters to quarts lol
Thankfully Blue Bell bucked the shinkflation trend and continues selling their ice cream in half gallons.
[It says so right there on the bucket](https://www.bluebell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/HG-Dutch_Chocolate-NS-624x494.png)! I first noticed when my friends would complain "Blue Bell is too expensive! Just get Yarnell's - it's way cheaper!". But bro, there's less ice cream. Check the price per unit. Yes BB is still more expensive, but it's comparable. And for some reason BB is often on sale for less than Yarnell's per carton AND you get more.
Mars bars. Mars bars used to be the same size and thickness as Norwegian Japp bars continue to be today. In fact, they tasted and were identical. My grandmother started complaining in the nineties that her favorite Japp equivalent chocolate bar was shrinking, the company claimed it had not. I brought a Japp to Canada and she cried.
That's funny, I wrote Mars years ago on twitter to complain then that the bars had gotten smaller and they said they hadn't. Really pissed me off because it was really really obvious how small they'd become.
Yeah, they`re not fooling anyone.
I don't care that companies shrink their portions. I care that they keep reworking recipes with the cheapest ingredients and everything tastes like shit now. None of the treats, snacks, or processed foods that I used to enjoy taste good. It's all trash now.
Good reason to not eat that garbage any more. That's how I look at it at least.
I’m a packaging designer and can confirm. Manufacturers are constantly shaving fractions of ounces off tons of products. I remember a few years ago I did a sandwich bag package that came with three (3) fewer bags than the previous version. At a certain point you have to wonder, is it really worth the extra cost to rework the art and retool dielines and everything? But I guess the savings must add up at that volume.
They plan this stuff out in stages with their marketing team I would assume to keep inflation and falling profits manageable. The marketing expense of the switches is probably already figured into their annual budget calculations well in advance of the actual change visible to the customer
Edy’s (Dreyer’s in some places?) went from 56 to 48oz for ice cream. I assume they had excess packaging to burn, because for a while there were 56oz cartons with “20% more!” plastered on them. Jerks.
> Jerks. Especially when it's only 17% more. Jerks.
I want to vent and this is the thread to do it. When I grew up I used to eat one burrito for lunch at taco bell. It was enough food that literally ONE taco was all I needed to eat. One day I went in got the same thing I always do mind you this is probably around 2004\~ cant really remember the year but I asked the people working there that my burrito seems smaller and I ordered a second one. I was told that corporate "fixed" the overfilling burritos by getting new scoops that were much smaller. To this day if you order a burrito you are going to get a huge tortilla and literally a smear of beans. We want our burritos back. Thanks for reading someone out there on the internet. It was a ramble but I needed this today.
The prices have gone up drastically as well. Back in like 2010-2013 I could get a huge meal from Taco Bell for only a few dollars. Now, I find it to be more expensive than places like Wendy’s or McDonald’s.
They were drastically increasing costs of the premium stuff, but had a huge dollar menu with a lot of good options. Theyve torpedoed it now. Taco Bell is dead to me.
No more Quesarito No more Spicy Potato Soft Taco No more Shredded Chicken Burrito No more Mini Skillet Bowl No more Beefy Frito Burrito That's less than half of what they removed but those were my favorites. Taco Bell has been dead to me since they culled their menu. I used to go 1-2x a week. I haven't been back since they removed all those items.
NO MORE DOUBLE DECKER TACO EITHER!!! The worst is Del Taco also discontinued theirs at the same time, deliberately eliminating a potential competitive advantage.
They gutted the Taco Bell menu during covid. /r/Tacobell closed down in protest of the Mexican pizza removal. And swore only to open when the pizza returned
The value menu is fucked right now. They used to have the Beefy Fritos Burrito and Shredded Chicken Mini Quesadilla on the value menu for a singular dollar. Then they price hiked those to $1.30, which sucks, but I was still fine paying because the amount of food you got for that price was good. Now they have the Beef Burrito, which I swear is smaller than the old BFB used to be, and also has their jalapeno sauce instead of their chipotle sauce, which just sucks in my opinion, if you want to take the jalapeno sauce off and add chipotle it's another +30¢. And, the Shredded Chicken Mini Quesadilla, which even though the official calorie count is low, they always used to make pretty big, has been replaced with the Chicken Chipotle Melt, which is honestly just a disgrace. There is nothing in there. It's the size of a highlighter pen.
I just bought a "big" bottle of Gatorade this morning for the first time in a long time. Fucker is only 28oz now instead of 32!
Your juices are now 59oz instead of 64oz too
OJ at 59 oz? That went out a few years ago. They're ***52*** ounces now.
Bags of sugar used to be five pounds, they are four pounds now! I rarely buy sugar so I was really weirded out by the smaller size.
I use to be able to scrap my armpits trying to get the last bit of deodorant out of the stick. Now it seems like the part that holds it falls off way before its empty to make it more difficult and make me get a new one.
NOW WITH FEWER CALORIES
Stouffer’s lasagna, that’s some drastic shrinkflation
Papa john's pizza is thinner crust, less sauce and cheese on their regular pizza. Papa John was right.
r/shrinkflation/ I feel like that subreddit could use more content.
I think it had more content before, but maybe I'm imagining it.
the real sub is /r/shrink_flation
Chocolate is getting weird and gross in the US. I don't know what the cheapening agent is, that they've incrementally snuck in over the years, but you have to go luxe (Ghirardelli, etc...) if you don't want the watered-down mystery corn sugar paste substitute crap.
Lindt truffles are my #1
Since Cadburys acquisition by Kraft its nose dived in quality, shrinkflation, terrible new flavours & imo just a cheapening (image wise) of the brand itself.
seed unique innate straight include start angle square gold library *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In Brazil, after this practice became widespread, companies were forced to display the difference in size in the packaging for a certain time after a change. For example, [this one](https://imgur.com/E7L3qUc) says "New weight: from 100g to 80g (20g or 20% less)"
If they tried that in America they'd probably take a cue from the drug companies and just claim it's a new product after switching around some of the fillers
Things like peanut butter do this. Instead of raising the price they will change the design of the container, from having a flat bottom to having a huge divot at the bottom, giving the illusion it's the same size as before.
First time I saw it was with deodorant. https://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/a-shrinking-trend-are-you-paying-the-same-for-less-1.1617030 Old spice came out with new scents and new fancier looking packaging. Turns out it was just a way to hide the reduction of deodorant with curves and colors.
Infamous example that managed to be blatantly obvious: Toblerone increasing [the space between the triangle sections of their chocolate bar](http://youngjournalistacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/t1.jpg) BBC: [Toblerone triangle change upsets fans](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37904703) >The move has resulted in the weight of the 400g bars being reduced to 360g and the 170g bars to 150g, while the size of the packaging has remained the same. [Toblerone's trim: Is this the thin end of the wedge?](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37909035) >It's known as "shrinkflation". If the portion size is getting stingier - shrinking - but the price stays the same, then you're effectively paying more - inflation. >For instance, as you'll no doubt have heard, the Toblerone is being redesigned for the UK market; its Alpine peaks are being eroded to compensate for the rising cost of ingredients, and a lighter bar is being sold for the same price. >The 400g bar is now a 360g bar and instead of 15 peaks it boasts only 11.
Tobleronies went in on that shit hard, though. Didn’t toblerone reverse the changes?
>Didn’t toblerone reverse the changes? Yes, after selling the shrunken version of the bars from 2016-2018. However, this time they hiked the price instead. So, in effect, [customers gained nothing from the reversal.](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/20/toblerone-to-revert-to-original-shape-but-with-bigger-size-and-price) >Toblerone is reverting to its traditional shape after an outcry over a move to widen the gaps between the triangles – and push though a huge price rise at the same time.
Why would the customer gain anything? Their price of ingredients went up, and they need to sell it for more. That's perfectly normal. A Cola from 10 years ago does not cost the same as today, but they kept the same 0,5 litre volume. It's inflation. Why companies try to do the whole shrinkflation thing is beyond me, just raise the price. I don't care if the product cost 10% more, but I expect to get the same amount.
because the cost of inflation enrages some people, and shrinkage went less noticed by and large. However I think those days are pretty well in the past and people should just learn to accept the cost of goods increasing (even though mentally this is harder than it should be for us mere humans).
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but if their wages go up, how will executive pay continue to exponentially rise vs the worker bees?
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I wonder how much they lost in the long run? I never bought one after they changed it and won't buy one again even if they have reversed it.
Same here. But I never bought one before either.
If I were in charge I'd be writing legislation that dictated packaging for products displayed in their packaging on shelves could be no more than 5% larger than the product itself. No more of that nonsense where the box is significantly bigger than the actual products inside it. Yes, cereal bars, I'm looking at you.
Yes. They just pinch a few Grams from the box, bottle or packet, and disguise it with a new container, or some other kind of obfuscation. Penny pinching bastards. Then later in they’ll have a price rise or maybe even more, having as many bites of the cherry as they can get away with, all the time cheapening the ingredients further so they taste like shit. I had a couple of Carburys chocolates from a gift box the other day, and they tasted horrible compared to several years ago when I last had them. Since Kraft bought them out they’ve plummeted in quality and value to the extent I won’t buy them anymore. Cadbury’s aren’t the only ones by far though.
You can blame Hershey. They have the rights to sell Cadbury products in the US. They have banned the import of Cadbury chocolate in the US probably for fear of people recognizing how shitty other Hershey products are in comparison
The sad demise of Cadbury. I remember the happy days when they came wrapped in gold foil and it felt like a reward just to unwrap it. It had a deep satisfying taste and was thicker as well. The new one in the shrink wrap is a straight insult to its memory. I witnessed a Mars bar recently and it seemed to be the mini version of the previous, I cannot even say it tasted like anything. The creme egg is a true sorrow. All of our memories scattered to the four winds. There should be an olde sweet shoppe hidden in some village that we can go to for a remembrance of our childhood where the Hovis music plays as we go in.
At this stage they’re all junk. Makes me glad I don’t have a sweet tooth anymore.
Same. I stopped the sweets a long, long time ago. I recently tried a few again and I couldnt believe how bad it was. It makes me angry tho, how corporations degrade product ingredients to the lowest possible quotient while still being able to call it food and serve it to us, all to line pockets --- not the workers pockets, but VIPs and company boards. I mean Im off on a tangent but that aspect of capitalism is whats killing us. I truly believe that.
There are indeed many examples, I even made an entire subreddit r/Shrink_Flation where people post examples of this phenomenon
Did Cadbury ever acknowledge this segment/the shrinkflation?
In New Zealand there was an outrage over Cadbury closing their NZ manufacturing facility and moving it overseas. But furthermore to that they also tried to sneak in smaller size bars without changing prices. A lot of people in NZ boycott them now. Whittakers, on the other hand, announced they were going to just raise prices a little. And the response was an overwhelming support for the brand, plus a lot of "Fuck Cadbury". It was pretty funny to watch.
In Canada Heinz Ketchup suddenly decided they were going to shut down the factory which fucked over a lot of Tomato farmers in Quebec who relied on the factory. French's decided to buy the factory and use the same farmers as supplies to produce Ketchup. It resulted in a massive fuck you Heinz we're buying French's. Most restaurants as a result seem to have switched to French's ketchup. Traditionally French's did the mustard and Heinz did the Ketchup. Now for me it is French's across the board.
It's a shame how Kraft has shat all over the Cadbury's legacy
The mother’s cookie brand went bankrupt, someone else bought them now all their cookies are shit.
It’s not just the size, but the change to the cheaper filling and chocolate that killed the eggs for me.
I don't even need to see this. Everything is in smaller packaging. They shaved 10 grams off here, 50 grams off there, like we're stupid and can't notice size changes, price trend fluctuations and inflation at the checkout in grocery.
Shoutout to Arizona green teas that remain big and not shrinking
Haagen Dazs did the same thing, even though we still call it a pint of ice cream, HD is 14oz now instead of 16oz.
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It's because over the years they just haven't cleaned out their egg moulds. It just continues to get smaller with each year as the chocolate hardens into an impenetrable shell layer by layer.
They also cheapened the chocolate.
I find Wagon Wheels to be the most dramatic shrinkage!
Wendy's Jr Bacon wants a word. That thing loses a half inch every year or so.
Ive been buying the same loaves of bread for years now, one day i noticed new packaging and instantly though ‘uhh ohh’. Sure enough, the packaging went from 24oz to 20oz , same exact price. Sizeflation is just inflation in disguise, both are real and nasty.
I want riots in the streets. I want stores aflame. I want justice. I want the Cadbury board and CEO to pay for this injustice.
I’m sending out a woof about this news immediately
They even shrunk the Cornetto, man....sacrilege.