It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a super full-blown grocery shopping trip. Soup was on sale so I bought two dozen Campbell soups. Exhausted when I got home I’m putting them away and notice that the gap between the top to where the main body of the can begins is unusually deep. I look at the ounces and it’s 10.5 oz. Didn’t soup used to be 11 or 12 oz?
Grocery shrink ray?
They’ve been doing this for ages now. Slowly shrink the size of things yet keep them at the same price and do it slowly enough that we won’t notice. Not that there’s much we can do about it if we did.
It used to be 10.75 oz or 318 ml for the longest time and now it’s 284 ml.
But that messes up my recipes. I have a bunch that say “add one can of tomato soup”.
This is new to me, but it’s called Shrinkflation, and it’s apparently been happening for decades.
Yeah Consumerist (RIP) covered it last decade and it keeps happening :(
The amount of additional trash and waste due to this must be massive. More packaging for smaller items forcing people to buy multiples…
Do a check when you buy cartons of ice cream. The big boxy ones used to be half a gallon. 64 ounces. Now many (most) are 1.5 quarts. 48 ounces. Same price.
Yeah I first noticed it with cereal my own self.
I love it in chips bags. When you buy these gigantic ones, just to open them and see that they are only 50% filled with chips - way more than would be needed to keep them from beeing squeezed too much.
I have no doubt this situation got worse, as well.
That’s to protect the chips from being crushed. It’s an air (nitrogen) cushion.
It is, but the amount of chips has been decreasing as well.
Remember when Best Foods/Hellmann’s shrank their jar of mayonnaise? heh, it made a splash.
Of course I still remember when I thought canned soup was good. The last time I tried Progresso and Campbell, it reminded me of what clay must taste like if you added water. I miss liking soup.
And lots of salt. Some time ago I was eating canned soup for lunch at work. I figured I would try the low sodium kind. It was tasteless.
I got some low sodium stuff on accident once. Talk about totally tasteless and blah. You’re right on the mark there. If I had to watch my sodium I’d give up on any kind of soup outside of home-made.
That’s probably what it was, unless I am indulging in straight up junk food, I do tend to look at labels and wouldn’t pick the one that has like 110% sodium in one can.
Speaking of junk food. Anything with a bag in it has a lot more air these days too, to so they look like the same size but… the product is less.
The only benefit of this disease is I actually need extra sodium… and fats and junk.
Orange juice as well. Was 64 oz. Now 52 or maybe 56.
You can still get Welch’s 100% Grape Juice in 64 oz. however, although I’m sure it’s priced accordingly.
Well gotta take the sunshine where it peeks.
I still prefer them cutting sizes to other ingredients. That frozen dessert stuff is a scam.