We need this law in the US. I’m not one to push for new regulations, but I have seen this happen time and again with big companies (Nabisco, General Mills) that shrink their boxes and count on the customer not to notice.
We'd end up in a miasma of litigation around whether one product is a reduced quantity of another, or if they're separate product lines.
Products already list quantities. That's enough for someone paying attention to value.
I’ll do the math. But I do want wt%
Maybe this is "my fault", but I'd guess that most consumers don't pay that much attention to the exact number of ounces (which are sometimes fractional) in the box.
Even then, I’m aware that many items have differences in content which game the price/measurement like a lower ingredient content (less cocoa per measurement and more fillers or water content).
There is not really a great way to combat these practices if you are not some kind of professional buyer that only purchases at wholesale scales.
Do you have a source for the $/Oz being due to bad behavior? From what I’ve heard it was done purely to address consumer demand.
Price/oz
Price/lb
Price/bar
Price/unit (which might be bar or package of two bars)
So you get tk calculate the difference in your head.
See the 'Background' section on page 11 of https://www.nist.gov/document/sp1181-unit-pricing-guidepdf and more generally https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/laws-and-regul.... So yes, it was done purely to address consumer demand... by way of laws and regulations with producers and retailers under threat of even more onerous laws and regulations.
A contemporary example to hopefully convey the situation back then: if 'right to repair' becomes law at some point, this would also be due to consumer demand. Notice the level of interest companies have in addressing this consumer demand prior to legislation being passed...
(1) Recently I wanted a bag of sugar. At my closest grocery store, the bag was 4 pounds instead of 5. No problem: At my next stop at Sam's Club, I got two bags, 15 pounds each.
(2) Sometimes dish soap comes in small bottles. Okay, at Sam's get a gallon jug of their generic dish soap and with a funnel refill the small bottles. Same for glass cleaner, etc.
(3) Pizza can be $7 to $20. Okay. (i) In a 5 quart bowl, add 750 ml water and 1 T dry yeast. Let the yeast soften. Measure 1 kg of flour. Add 1 T salt to the water, stir, add 2/3rds of the flour, stir, add the rest of the flour, mix some, and dump on a floured board. By hand mix and knead for 8 minutes. Return to the bowl, cover, and let rise to fill the bowl. Dump on the board, form in a long loaf, cut into 8 equal pieces, place each each in a covered plastic bowl, refrigerate. Starting the next day for two weeks or so, for a pizza, take one of the dough pieces, in a microwave proof plate form in a circle 7-9" in diameter, and warm in microwave for 3 minutes. Add 3 T sauce, 1/4 C shredded Mozzarella, and maybe some pepperoni, sausage, etc., place in a clean steel pan, over medium heat, covered, for 13 minutes, move to a cutting board, slice, slide to a dinner plate, add 1 T of grated hard cheese, and eat. Get the flour, 25 pounds, at Sam's, and then the flour for one pizza is about 9 cents. With good toppings, the total cost is still about $1. So, anytime, in 20 minutes, 7 of effort and 13 waiting, get a pizza faster, better, and cheaper than frozen, carryout, or delivery.
I don't know where you live, but in Manhattan your version will be cheaper, but it will definitely not be better and most likely will be no faster.
Neither your stove nor your oven can match a commercial pizza oven.
> match a commercial pizza oven.
"Match" in what sense? What I described is different but works great.
For the 20 minutes, even in Manhattan, tough to take the order, make and bake the pizza, slice it, box it, and deliver it, all in 20 minutes.
For the quality, that's a matter of taste, but frozen, carryout, and delivery don't use better ingredients.
Whatever strong opinions some people in Manhattan may have about pizza, for the world of pizza, Manhattan is a very tiny place. E.g., apparently all or nearly all Sam's Clubs scattered all across the US sell 5 pound bags of part skim, shredded, Mozzarella cheese, and no doubt nearly all of it goes for pizza: Pizza is all over the US and much of the rest of the world -- in comparison, Manhattan is a small thing!
By the way, for delivering a pizza quickly, there is a fundamental problem made fully clear in queuing theory: The orders have to arrive essentially as a Poisson process. But the pizza shop has only fixed capacity in pizzas made per minute. So, we have random demand fed to a fixed resource. Then the pizza shop has just two alternatives, (i) deliver quickly but have a lot of expensive time where the delivery people are doing nothing and (2) delivery slowly, from a queue, where the delivery people are busy but the customers have to wait.
For the actual, final baking, I'm not using an oven and am using just a common, restaurant style, all steel saute pan with a circular flat bottom about 8" in diameter. So, I get the bottom of the pizza crisp and as brown as I want. And I cover the pan to create an oven that does cook the dough some more and melt the cheese.
All of this is my response to the OP about shrinkflation. I've outlined a response -- 20 minutes, 9 cents of flour, crisp bottom, sauce, cheese, and sausage of your choice, etc. My post is just in response to the OP's shrinkflation and not throwing down a gauntlet as the world's greatest pizza, better than NYC, Chicago, Naples, etc. For one, do some arithmetic on the 1 kg of flour, split 8 ways, and the 7" diameter -- get a relatively thick pizza, and people who want pizza very thin might not be happy.
I live a couple blocks from a pizza place. I order, wait 10 min, then turn on my oven, and then pick it up 10 min later.
Except for fast-food companies, which we've been told have slyly been increasing their portion sizes and making us fat.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17585324
Or maybe we could just stop being victims of the evil corporations and we take responsibility for our lives.