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Comment by sfotm | Hacker News Reader

Nope - in fact, I hear that they prefer to change the size rather than the price because consumers tend not to notice it as much.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/25401945

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The one for me was breyer's ice cream. I was working stocking it at the time it happened. They used to show up as 5 packs of 500g cartons. One summer, during a sale, the prices stayed the same, but they started showing up in 4 packs of 450g cartons. I had to rearrange the whole shelf because they didn't fit the same way any more. So this really stuck in my mind. The cost was the same to the store too on the packing slips for a whole pallet. They just gave less and decreased the size of each carton.

I've told a related story from the same time period on here before about how they stopped putting handles on the large 4L ice cream buckets so they could save 1¢ per bucket. That was the same summer.

This is what happened in Ireland when new taxes on sugary drinks came in. Drinks that came in 2L bottles now came in 1.75L bottles at the same price. The diet versions with no sugar remained in 2L bottles. Companies like Coke are now only making variants like vanilla or cherry flavours using their diet or zero sugar products

This is why if you want to tax sweet drinks, you should charge it on artificial sweeteners too because otherwise it’s just a handout for aspartame.

...but that’s the idea. They want people to drink the artificially sweetened version instead. That’s what the tax is for. If they taxed both the same it wouldn’t work.

I think you've missed sight of the point of those taxes, which is to reduce consumption of actual excess sugar, not to tax things that taste sweet.

Both are unhealthy its not clear that fake sweeteners are better for you. Why tax a different kind of unhealthy less?

I'm no fan of artificial sweeteners or sweet things in general but the scientific evidence is pretty overwhelming that most of them are far healthier than sugar.

Non-sugar sweeteners are better for you in at least one significant way: they have almost zero calories.

Because the scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that artificial sweeteners _are_ better for you. They have no proven health impact and eliminate calories. The idea that they're somehow "just as bad" (or even worse) only comes from sugar and corn industry lobbying and marketing efforts.

I have heard that too, but I don't believe in it. If they do it, it must be applied only in specific circumstances, and with some other mechanism to restore the size again. Because containers aren't getting silly small over time. They seem to be pretty much aimed at whatever is a convenient amount.

Coffee is sometimes that way. For more expensive beans brands’ll cut the weight and keep the price the same, shelve it right next to the other stuff. You have to check the weight to see which ones are expensive.

[edit] and of course 12oz has replaced 16oz as the “standard” size.

The UK mandates putting 'price per unit' on the price labels, which makes this kind of comparison a lot easier.

Some stores in the US have that, some don’t, and it’s always a lot smaller than the total price when they do.

I've come to really enjoy grocery shopping, planning a week worth of meals, being adaptive when good deals come up, trying new things, working to minimize waste. Eating a healthy diet.

One of the things I like about grocery shopping is practicing mental math, and I calculate price per quantity mentally when choosing between different brands/sizes. It's good mental exercise, and the ability to do that sort of division mentally occasionally is helpful in other contexts.

A lot of them that do mix units between products of the same class (one measured as volume per unit, and another as mass per unit), making it difficult to do a direct comparison.

What do you mean by "it's smaller than the total"? Do they literally write the wrong price or do they choose any unit they happen to think makes for a good sounding price per unit?

In most of Europe (probably all the EU countries at least, unified regulations yay) shops need to put the price per 1kg/100g/1L/100mL on the tags, depending on which is most appropriate for the product.

The physical printing is smaller.

Often much smaller. A few stores like Costco actually print it large enough that you don't have to get up close and squint at each price tag to see the unit price. Usually you can't just scan the shelf and comparison shop on unit price.

Same in Canada. Unit prices are useful for comparisons, but it's hard to avoid the big, colorful "ON SALE" tags.

This absolutely happens. But after a while, manufacturers increase the size & price at the same time, pointing out the increase in product, of course. None of this is new, it's been happening for decades.

It's a documented phenomenon that happens so regularly there's a name for it: shrinkflation.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/24/sweets-are-...

Specifically, Hershey's Chocolate Bars did it to maintain a 5 cent price from 1902 until 1969. By then, the bar shrank to half the size as it used to be, so they doubled the size of the bar and charged 10 cents for it.

Coke was also a nickel for a long time, and since it was frequently sold in vending machines it was advantageous to be able to sell it for a single coin. So they actually lobbied for the production of a 7.5 cent coin.

Yep. Same thing happened with baked beans and corn chips recently. Shrink the size while offering a small discount (still more expensive per unit weight) and then a little later introduce a new jumbo size for more than the old price.

That's basically matched to inflation - would be more surprised if unchanged

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