Earlier quoted context omitted.
Density also matters, or you could cheat and sell a roll of paper "fluff". Also, many people fold rather than wad.
You could multiply all of those together to get mass.
Cue the heavy cardboard rolls in the middle.
How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
81–90 of 174 posts
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#82In Sweden, "jämförelsepris" (comparison price) is mandatory for many goods. This means stores have to, in addition to price, display "price per gram" or whatever unit makes sense. This way, you can quickly compare different groceries despite differing packages, and shrinking the item for the same price would be visible when looking at the comparison price.
In the US it’s not mandatory, and most supermarkets do it anyway.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#83My father told me about the "nickel bar" which was a popular chocolate bar that sold for, you guessed it, a nickel. The size of the bar would grow and shrink as the cost of chocolate varied.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#84Shrinking portions is the simplest way. The other is replacing products. Say supermarket bakery introduces new bread with seasame seeds only 25¢ more. Then slowly there is only new seasame seeds bread on shelves and regular bread becomes rare. Later seasame seeds is slowly dispearing from bread and voila - you have made regular bread 25¢ more expensive. The other way is lowering quality of products. Inflation basket…
> a quality of simple bread from 40 years ago
Wonder Bread was popular in the 1960's, 50 years ago.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you mean listing the change on already mandatory information. Note that a lot can be told just looking at the label, but few people do it. For example quality meats tend to have more protein, quality diary products tend to to have more fat. High salt and sugar is usually a bad sign. The order of ingredients is important too: greatest amount first. It means that if the thing they advertise in front of the package i…
> It means that if the thing they advertise in front of the package is way down the list, that's not good. Certain strong flavors, like mint, pepper, and lemon, usually appear pretty low in the ingredients list at the same time they're headlining the label.
If you have time, perusing ingredient lists for products at the grocery store is fascinating.
I got in the habit trying to avoid palm oil, but there's all kinds of surprises in there.
Not in the "I'm shocked there are chemicals in my food" way. But just in the transparent differences in formulation by weight.
Check out marinades / BBQ sauces and baked beans.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sweden passed the law in 1991 and joined the EU in 1995 — and as usual, stating "this exists in country X" is not insinuating "this only exists in country X".
Relax a bit. The only point GP was trying to make is that it's not just Sweden but in many EU countries it's also a law. There is no need to be aggressive.
I'm not being aggressive, I'm just frustrated because it seems to be impossible to point out that something is the case in the country where I live without one of the replies being in the spirit of "well, actually..." — so all I'm saying is that pointing out a phenomenon as geographically situated somewhere is not the same as pointing it out as unique to that location. I get this often enough that I expect it every time, so I'm sorry if some of the frustration shines through. There just seems to be a pathological tendency to correct people, to the extent where the errors are willfully interpreted as such.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#87In Sweden, "jämförelsepris" (comparison price) is mandatory for many goods. This means stores have to, in addition to price, display "price per gram" or whatever unit makes sense. This way, you can quickly compare different groceries despite differing packages, and shrinking the item for the same price would be visible when looking at the comparison price.
Same EU rule is circumvented by some shops by having the comparison prices in mismatched dimensions (volume Vs weight Vs unit).
In Australia the misleading part is what's actually weighed. The price per kg for canned beans doesn't help when 400g supermarket brand is 280g beans, 120g water. :(
But on average, with pretty much everything else, it works just fine.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#88This is a process Brazilians know well. Chocolate bars used to have 200g. Some now have less than 100g. Toilet paper rolls used to have 50m; most now have 30m and some have only 10m. This sort of thing started happening in the 1980s, because the government had frozen prices (that always works well). It became such a problem that now the law says that the packaging must clearly point out if the quantity inside has cha…
I'd also like to see a law passed that requires each product to mention on its packaging if its ingredients (even just their relative proportions) have changed. This would apply to things like foods/drinks and also cleaning products. Of course companies would protest, claiming that their recipes are trade secrets, but we already require that products list their ingredients, and we protect trademarks for products, whi…
So much this! I could swear that cheese in germany adds more and more.. Water or so and taste less and less like cheese..
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relax a bit. The only point GP was trying to make is that it's not just Sweden but in many EU countries it's also a law. There is no need to be aggressive.
I'm not being aggressive, I'm just frustrated because it seems to be impossible to point out that something is the case in the country where I live without one of the replies being in the spirit of "well, actually..." — so all I'm saying is that pointing out a phenomenon as geographically situated somewhere is not the same as pointing it out as unique to that location. I get this often enough that I expect it every t…
I get why this frustrates you but as you can not change other people you could try to clarify by adding a "This might exist in other countries as well" or similar.
Re: How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models
#90In Sweden, "jämförelsepris" (comparison price) is mandatory for many goods. This means stores have to, in addition to price, display "price per gram" or whatever unit makes sense. This way, you can quickly compare different groceries despite differing packages, and shrinking the item for the same price would be visible when looking at the comparison price.
In the US it’s not mandatory, and most supermarkets do it anyway.
But in the US it is frequent that the price per weight (or per volume) is not displayed consistently in the same units, for example $/oz for some items versus $/lb, and it's much harder to do conversions than with the metric system.