To think shrinkflation is getting out of control?

I wonder where it will end, because if companies continue to make products smaller, eventually they’ll be tiny. A Mars Bar will be an inch long. Will they still think we won’t notice?!!

Yes - 3 weeks in a row - rotten mouldy tops on broccoli - Aldi 🤨

That's not always the case, though - Whole Earth peanut butter comes in about 4 different sizes of jar; and Kellogg's cereals will frequently have something like 560g or 710g (I can't remember the exact numbers) - very often with supposedly 'X% extra free', which blurs the sizes even more.

I take your point about having both a 14-pack and a 16-pack would be silly, but the only reason that the 14-pack exists is to hoodwink us - they haven't genuinely worked out that people only want to buy 14, as 16 would be too many!

Most chocolate makers now make their 'standard' bars the same size as what a mini/snack-size bar would have been not all that long ago.

It comes with the lie that "people want to make healthier choices and eat smaller snacks" - like they don't just have two instead - but I'm pretty sure most people don't have a budgetary preference/requirement whereby they couldn't manage with the price going down in accordance with the smaller amount they're now getting; there isn't a 'folk have too much money' crisis!

They're going to eventually get to a point where all 'standard' sized food makes an average person feel like Gulliver when they handle it. Mind, they'll probably introduce 'new big family economy value packs' which are the same size as the old standard ones, but now at multiples of the old price.

Then some big shot campaigner will compare the 'new big family economy value packs' with the 'standard' ones (i.e. the now vastly shrunk tiny ones), declare a new obesity crisis and urge the government to levy swingeing new taxes on 'massive' portions.

Something I noticed recently with Lurpak spreadable butter in Asda
small tub, 250g £2:75
medium tub 400g (used to be 500g) £4:00
large tub 750g £7:25
so, they’re pretty much £10-£11/kg but they were selling the 600g “Tickled Pink” version, that was raising funds for breast cancer charities Coppa Feel and Breast Cancer Now, for £3:00 so only £5/kg. Goes to show, when they want to, they can sell a product at a reasonable price!!

Just state it then. It’s the not being upfront. Call it an affordable pack.

Whays fox’s biscuits excuse with the truck packaging?

I bought a small chocolate bar the other day. For crying out loud, it was titchy tiny! 2 bites and it was gone, it was definitely bigger the last time I bought it. Everything is just smaller, we are being robbed.

One word deodorant!

What the hell is going on there? I ordered some with the shopping the other day. It looked like it was for Barbie when it arrived. No wonder it was cheap.

Used Dove for years. Old deodorant, new price- given a fancy name to sound worth the extra money. Or old price, rubbish product that makes me smell!

Totally agree about toothpaste. I have to buy double the amount of tubes I used to.

I work in food manufacturing and honestly these comments make me laugh. Supermarkets want to maintain huge margins on everything they sell. So in some areas of the store 50% of the price you pay goes to them. They then want to promote the product to let's say save 20% but then expect the supplier to contribute to the discount as well so that they don't have to eat into their own profit margin.

For suppliers, all costs have gone up in basic overheads like electricity and staffing. So have most raw materials. They need to produce the products and pay staff and make some money themselves. But many shoppers don't have enough money week to week to buy the same size pack at a much higher price, so we do everything we can to keep the purchase price affordable and unfortunately that means smaller packs and often changing recipes to cheaper ingredients.

And even still many, many food and grocery manufacturers are going out of business because they can't make enough money. It's not at all as black and white as you think.

😆 You'd have to be hard up for reasons to celebrate if Tesco profits are a highlight! 😆

Or you buy a pack of 4 baking potatoes; one is huge and the other three tiny.

Baking' potatoes which used to be much larger than average are now one step up from a new potato!

I order online but I don't put baking potatoes or peppers on the list as they are tiny!

I do get annoyed by this but also by cafes charging you the same amount for what used to be a medium coffee but they now call it a large

One cafe is now just a generous gulp !

Oh this is bugging me so much lately!

'Baking' potatoes which used to be much larger than average are now one step up from a new potato!

I saw Poppadoms the other day which were tiny - the size of a tea coaster. It's such a joke.

Although what's also a joke is that somehow even though the food is shrinking, I'm getting fatter 😆

So there's not even a silver lining!

Went to John Lewis the other day as they have a pick and mix Quality Street stand. Got my strawberry creams and purple ones for DH. Purple ones are tiny. Both tasted terrible, I think it’s the new paper wrapper.

I bought some (much more expensive) chocolate from a nice shop on a day out the other day and will probably bin the QS. Such a waste but just don’t taste the same now ☹️

Freddos have definitely gotten smaller :(

I'm stuck with Anchor butter unfortunately because my ASD daughter won't eat anything else.😔

to some extent I don’t mind it, I’m a snacker who keeps going until the packet it empty, so a smaller mars bar saves me from myself! multipacks that have gone from 6 to 5 (or magnums from 4 to 3) are handy for a family with 3dc.

toothpaste, loo roll, the con artistry in packaging however, that angers me. The biscuit trays with an empty raised bit in the middle…

I think I need to look at my self-discipline!

I feel I need to say only one thing. Twix. If twix get any smaller they will have to rename them Tw.

Eurgh, who celebrates Tesco's profits?!

We all celebrate when Tesco etc announce £2.5billion in profits without actually thinking how they got them.

We call the Americans stupid but price inflation was a thing for them, it doesn't seem to bother us lot.

B&M ground coffee, went from 250g to 200g but the price went up 50p.......

Also clothes sizes seemed to have shrunk in some shops in their attempt to save fabric - either that or I've got fatter!

It's ridiculous with fruit and veg too, where they come up with silly codes rather than clearly telling you the date - when it was picked, displayed or is best before - and they keep changing their 'codes' to try to keep confusing you.

They insult our intelligence too, by claiming that it's to 'help avoid waste' - as though we will ignore the evidence of our own eyes and won't bin rotten food anymore if we can't make out the actual date on it.

Marmite!

And they came in a tin rather than a plastic tub too.

I wonder how they ask the question and whether they manipulate it at all?

If they were so confident that people definitely wanted to keep the price the same, even if that means getting a lot less for it, surely they would proudly boast about it on the packaging!