Shrinkflation Tracker
shrinkflation.io
shrinkflation.io
Shrinkflation generally means same price for less product (grams, fluid ounces), but enshitification by slowly decreasing the quality of the ingredients is also a problem.
Do we put that under the shrinkflation umbrella or track it as a separate problem? Since they are both unwanted solutions to the same problem, seems like they should be kept together (to avoid a Goodhart's Law fiasco)
I recall eating an Oreo after fifteen years of not having one. At first I just thought I'd forgotten what they actually tasted like, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see a long chain of focus groups asking customers if cookie A and cookie B taste the same, if one tastes better, and slowly changing the formula to only alienate 0.2% of the customers each time until one day I wander up and find I'm part of the 10% they've cumulatively alienated.
See also how only some of us can taste certain artificial sweeteners as sugary toxic waste instead of sugar (saccharin tastes to me like drinking soda after licking a 9 volt battery)
Trans fats are a good example of this. They used to be the prime replacement for saturated fats. Now, in the US, they are effectively banned.
This hit oreos. [1]
[1] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2006/01/02/manufacturers-tri...
The fracking industry has made guar gum too expensive to use as a food emulsifier. I know someone who reacts to xanthan gum (which has all but replaced guar) and she's not a happy camper, because it's in fucking everything.
Palm oil is thick at room temp, like partially hydrogenated oils are.
They did use lard till mid 90s.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2008/02/getting-lard-out-ko...
Every time you see a package with “new and improved recipe” you can bet it only improved their margins by using cheaper ingredients, not the actual taste.
Look at coffee. The gradual shift from Arabica to more Robusta beans over a generation. Each year, an imperceptible shift was taken that, over decades, lead to coffee that tastes terrible. Opening the door for companies like Starbucks and a ton of gourmet roasters to compete.
But properly roasted, single origin coffee costs more than Chock-full-o'nuts. So you have options.
I've surrendered and just drink tea and chai now.
In fact their coffee doesn't taste like coffee, but more like mocha/hazelnut ice cream.
Much like how McDonalds, KFC, etc started by making decent food so did Starbucks. Add 40+ years of optimizing for the bottom line and the average person’s pallet and you get a very different product.
Cold brew is better, but not as much as afficionadoes sold me on. I can still taste the bitters.
For the job, there were five "espresso style" variants[2]. Although the "black no sugar" was too intense or me, none of them were bitter. I could make them bitter if I left one open too long or by heating one and letting it cool. There are only three variants now, and I miss the the discontinued "black lightly sweet" and "mochachino".
I've since experimented with making cold brew, servedhot or cold, with a little potassium bicarbonate. I've also tried some ready-made cold brews and lighter roasts. Darker roasts taste more burnt to me. Robusto is unsuitable. Arabica is better, especially if it has a good proportion of Kona in it. If it doesn't specifiy how much Kona, assume it's not enough to make a difference. I haven't tried pure Kona, even while in Hawai'i, because price.
[1] This was not planned. I was mistakenly given regular tablets instead of children's chewable…more than once, by different people. Not a recommended experience.
[2] I'm told Italy made them stop calling it that, because of some legal definition of what constitutes espresso.
No we call it just that, enshittification.
I'll be glad when this juvenile meme finally passes out of Hacker News' system.
The manufacturers would have to publish the contents for each UPC in a machine readable format.
Then the retailers would have to publish daily prices, again in a machine redable format.
...and the world would be a much nicer place for the consumer. Everyone could build apps on top of that, you could compare retailers, comparable items could be crowdsourced (eg, 1L of 3.5% fat milk and a list of all UPCs for that), shopping list apps could calculate the cheapest options to choose the cheapest store, or in cases with multiple stores in a cluster, tell you what to buy where, etc.
And the best thing is, that nobody actually regulates any prices or item sizes, just the consumer gets more informed.
All products have multiple component suppliers, with different tolerances/varieties, where the components are judged "close enough". Suppliers come and go. And even if it's a single large supplier, they may have different farms/factories/etc so you won't even be getting homogeneous components from them.
1. In the scrolling feed on the homepage, a 0% change is shown as negative with a red down arrow
2. In the tracker page, 0% is grey (good!) but still with a down arrow, which isn't accurate
3. Might be a good idea to highlight egregious offenders over small decreases. Maybe bold the value if it's greater than 10-15%?
4. Would be cool to be able to sort to see the worst offenders!
* assuming the availability of pro bono legal aid as part of social welfare, a key part of any judicial system.
At least where I am (Britain), compensation will be given if the case was deemed to have been opened without sufficient evidence, which keeps the Crown fairly honest about what they prosecute. The police have a slightly less positive record for integrity, but pro bono support is available if you are actually charged. The result of this is that you should never be left financially worse for having been prosecuted if you subsequently win your case.
Finally, you never need to tell anyone that you've been charged. Of course, people can find out if they are keen enough to do so, but I probably pass on the street dozens of people who've been charged and acquitted for crimes, but I would never know and don't need to know.
Now they've started including frozen sauce packets as well. I've weighed some of these and found, for example, a 2 lb box of chicken wings that comes with more than half a pound of buffalo sauce. The net weight stays the same (2 lb) but if you weigh the chicken you're getting less than 1.5 lb of meat! The rest is all sauce!
But then again if there is no health impact (like with Trans fats) then is there any incentive for the regulators to change this?
Has the FDA ever done any work to protect consumers from sketchy marketing/labeling of products?
(I asked ChatGPT and it gave me a few bits. Apparently the term "Healthy" is regulated. And serving sizes are another that seem to be regulated. Maybe there is an angle within there that would make sense.)
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-mi...
…www.Sainsbury's.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-milk-fruit---nut-200g
My
If you are an indie maker and priced your product at $10 in 2020, you're now effectively making $8.38 USD[1]. Assuming inflation will remain elevated and you want to maintain the same margins, you need to either:
1. increase prices
2. reduce quality/quantity/features
3. reduce supplier costs
4. reduce service costs
Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices. This is a case where none of the options are great.
if companies were honest, they'd put"29% less, but the same price! Inflation, you know?", and more-informed consumers could make more-informed choices
indeed, "Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices" is a nicer way of saying "shrinkflation makes it easier to hide from consumers that they are receiving less value for their money"
Thank you for this site, if the author is here, it's something I felt we needed to make markets more informed and more efficient. I'll be submitting content.
They are hoping you don't notice.
In theory software is easier because you could more easily change your pricing every month. With CPG these products sit on store shelves and the manufacturers have less direct control over the pricing.
To reiterate, a company honest with consumers would inform them they were getting less for the same price, and try to make the case you're making now: "hey, sorry about this, but times are tough, and we can't raise prices"
Less scrupulous and deceptive companies don't
An upstream problem is the money printing that causes some of these incentives in the first place.
How do they do this? They make a chocolate bar that a shop buys and puts on a shelf.
An example of messaging for the former is described in the quote you quoted. Another would be to use different-looking packaging, to indicate that it is not what it was before. If a consumer will still buy the item when properly informed of the lower value, then this apparent labeling should not have any effect on sales. If it does, it means the information hiding was material, which makes it bad.
tl;dr: companies hide this information because being deceptive increases sales, if it didn't, they wouldn't
If it looks different, consumers might not know it's the same thing just smaller. E.g. if I buy a box of Celebrations, I know what each little sweet is because it shares the same packaging as its normal-sized equivalents. I know it's smaller because...it's smaller.
Indeed, if the packaging is the same except for the quantity labels, then you don't, in fact, know it's smaller, because both the quantity change and the packaging change has been calculated to hide that fact from you. That's the problem being solved here.
With a proper packaging change, on the other hand, your confusion is resolved within seconds, when you read the packaging, which can include whatever explanatory info the manufacturer decides to put there. And if it's not resolved? The manufacturer should do better to explain.
5. They expansively tier their product line with minor variation to remove the idea of a standard offering. Eg there are some 33 sizes of M&Ms so nobody could say "get me a bag of M&Ms" any more. Forget comparing cell service plans.
* https://www.measuringhow.com/m-and-m-bag-sizes-guide/
* https://www.quora.com/Why-are-model-numbers-for-the-same-appliance-all-different-in-each-store-you-visit?share=1
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/16/amazon-has-a-patent-to-keep-you-from-comparison-shopping-while-youre-in-its-stores/
* https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/accounting/discouraging-price-shopping/This site is great, people need more transparency and companies need to be called out
https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=soap <- zero results https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=dove <- result has 'soap' in name
Change in price over time is irrelevant for making a decision on whether or not something is worth the utility to price ratio now. If you are trying to time the market on junk food, then it is best to simply avoid it.
If, for some reason, you want to prevent Mondelez, or whichever other manufacturer, from earning more profit margin than it historically has, then you can look up their public financials most of the time:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MDLZ/mondelez/prof...
To put factual and open information out there of how companies consistently just fuck with all of us and get away with every little thing they can because "profits!" and "their duty to investors!". e.g., the biggest lies our societies ever came up with
And that purchasing power of currencies will go down over time.
This is only true when you keep printing more of it. The creation of currency outpacing the creation of value is inflation.
There was over a decade of QE which the rainmakers said would totally cause inflation. It didn’t.
Then there were supply side shocks which would definitely only cause transitory inflation. Also wrong.
Then we learned that sentiment causes it, and in the middle of terrible sentiment inflation went down.
Every complex problem has a simple, intuitive, easy to understand wrong answer. It is not an exaggeration to say that we do not know what causes inflation.
False
It contained 4.5 ozs of "newfangled potato chips" (I think they legally can't call them chips anymore). That works out to about 125grams give or take.
This site is kvetching that they are at 200 grams now.
Ps, my can doesn't have a UPC barcode on it because they hadn't been invented yet.
edit: Yep https://honestreporting.com/fighting-bds-with-buycotts/
You can use it to boycott anything (perceived as conservative or neutral) you like as long as it's not progressive or Israeli.
So, useless.
Thank you for the link.
Example below. Top row is blurry but bottom row shows “per ounce” price on the bottom right. Tiny print and I imagine barely anyone actually shops that way.
I’m guessing there must be some US requirement for this otherwise I’m not sure why it’s commonplace.
https://supersafeway.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-S...
This feels so foreign to me; I largely ignore the overall price and shop by unit prices within a reasonable size range.
>The simplest form of direct adjustment is quantity adjustment, which is used when there is a permanent size change in an item.
And someone pointed out the preponderance of junk food; I want to see core items that are often used in recipes. To me this is the most offensive aspect of these scams: You know your favorite recipe takes four cans of tomatoes, cans that have been the same size for decades. Now... WHOOPS, your meal is messed up because the manufacturer is too gutless to simply raise the price.
The one example I see on the site is butter: https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=butter
These jagoffs reduced the quantity by 20%, which is definitely enough to mess up recipes.
Anywhere from 1297 to 9248 apparently, I guess he must have some kind of time traveler
Maybe we just care more about it when we see prices raising in general? IDK.
Shrinkflation is important for understanding true price increase. It’s not enough to say “toothpaste went up 20%” in price because you really want to know “toothpaste went up 35% based on weight.”
It’s also frustrating because it’s just another level of bullshit to sift through when shopping. It would be nice if manufacturers and retailers didn’t do this.
They do it because otherwise people will complain incessantly about price increases and this way people only complain intermittently about shrinkflation.
If these brands make the portions smaller, they are actually doing us a favour.
After a quick browse, I haven't found anything on that site that actually qualifies as food.
Couldn't care less how prices of these items develop.
I would love to see a list of Parent companies. Single brands will be hard to remember.
A lot of times people don’t even use the entirety of a product they pay for. Shrinkflation can essentially just cut that part out. Even if you eat 100% of something, your brain was probably satiated after eating 80%, the rest is excess.
For stuff like candy you won’t notice a missing gummy bear or two. You’ll get the same satisfaction.
Manufacturers would gladly boast about increasing the size of their product if they did so, but do everything they can to hide when they've shrunk it.
Manipulative tricks like oddly shaped packaging or plastic fillers to take up the space that was previously product are examples of why people hate shrinkflation.
If something goes up in price but the quantity and quality stayed the same, people wouldn't feel like they're being tricked.
If someone sells you a bag of chips but they’ve already eaten two of the chips, your enjoyment of the bag will still be the same as if you had the whole bag. If they reveal that fact to you though, then your experience will be soured.
This is for the consumer’s own benefit.
People like to be dealt with fairly. When they occasionally notice things that make them realize there are rooms full of people whose entire job is to trick them, they don't like it. Where's the mystery?
The point of shrinkflation is to obfuscate the price increase and hope that some consumers don’t notice.
Now about that shrinkflation thing... There isn't a single product in that list that is actually healthy. Highly processed food is horrible for us and our environment, and the gigantic conglomerates making and selling them are a plague to our economies.
Veggies at my local farmers' market didn't shrink in size, prices went up slightly for some and it's very visible from the tag. Same goes for the bread I buy at the bakery, and the pasta I get in bulk in a small store nearby. If you have no choice but to rely on these products bought in a supermarket, you've been conned way before shrinkflation hit.
Yup. Those toothpastes with extra whitening are wreaking havoc. It's effectively liquid sandpaper.
> Frothing and minty taste of toothpaste are mostly marketing
The frothing, sure. The mint? I mean, I like some kind of flavoring. Mint is nice.
> Maybe there's a case for fluoride, but there are other sources like tap water (and that's a whole digression of it's own).
There's definitely a case for the fluoride. Your tap water isn't enough.
I’m saying it’s a subjective nice, it’s not adding to the hygienic effect of toothpaste. Its was added to feel clean, not because it actually does any cleaning.
Fluoride works, but the concentration in toothpaste is usually too low to be effective.
My (very) lay understanding is that the constant low level fluoride was what's important for long-term dental health.
It sucks that Cadbury eggs get smaller and smaller. Not because I need their nutrients to survive.
* added sugar
* preservatives
* texturizers
Cut these out and you're on the right side concerning processed foods.
I'd be more interested in home goods such as soap, detergent; and food staples.
The sadistic think about brands is that people are paying for marketing team to continue to lie to them and brainwash them, to convince them to continue buying their products!
Media is full of brands - gosh I wonder how they have all that budget for expensive marketing campaigns !
It's so incredibly hard to wean someone off brands. I've been campaigning my family for years, but they still seem allergic to Aldi/Lidl etc.
Take cereal (eww):
Aldi Corn Flakes (500g) - £0.75 ($0.93)
Kellogs Cornflakes (500g) - £2.25 ($2.79)
3x more expensive! THREE. (some people might be thinking that $2.79 is nothing but just think in relative terms)
Yes Kellogs Cornflakes taste a bit nicer but that's not the comparison to make: a small serving of oats with some fruit is a MUCH better breakfast meal. Oats are roughly same amount of calories per gram but much more filling and less sugar, salt, fat etc and double the protein. But we're all addicted to cereal because the adverts brainwashed our parents in to thinking it's a healthy meal to have in the morning.
(EDIT: oops guess I'm a hypocrite) And has anyone tasted a McVities Digestive biscuit recently? (similar to a graham cracker, a distant relative of the shortbread - very very popular in the UK)? Absolutely vile. If you're still buying them you're literally an idiot and COVID must have destroyed your taste buds. Aldi own brand digestives taste like the old recipe of McVities Digestives at 1/3 of the price!
It is one a lot of people make, also... you make that comparison literally one line down.
People pay McVities to brainwash them in to thinking they're better, so they don't need to be better LOL
https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/14/590x/seconda...
Oh wait, that's horseshit that even Kellogg can't get away with anymore.
https://thecounter.org/kellogg-sugary-cereal-healthy-label/
Breakfast cereal, namely corn flakes, is a mass psychosis. Have them sometimes if you like as a treat, but even then you might as well eat a bowl of ice cream. The idea of eating cornflakes was invented by a guy who gave his "patients" yogurt enemas. Why in 2023 are we still taking his advice?
>In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese.
>39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese.
https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h...
>The number of people affected by hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021
I would bet the obesity numbers have greatly increased since 2016.
Price increases in healthy lentils, grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and healthier meats/poultry/fish is a concern for the global poor, but that is not what is talked about here.
> Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3%) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021
It’s easy to talk on a forum like this, where the median salary is massive compared to global/country median, that poor people shouldn’t be able to afford as much bad food. I think when you do so you’ve lost touch with the average person who is affected by things like shrinkflation.
But generally, the people eating burgers in developed countries have a choice of eating healthier foods, and choose to eat burgers instead.
I don't believe though that this is inevitable, and I hope that the first world will continue to improve its situation, and that less well-equipped areas will somehow avoid making the mistakes and leapfrog these uncomfortable middle periods. We see this for instance with the Industrial Revolution, where those that can be credited with facilitating it generally did pretty poorly for themselves, but those who industrialised later were substantially better off.
They're a lot poorer now, and so they have less money to spend on healthy food. So not only are they destroying their health by smoking, they're stuck eating crappy food as well.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/434150/share-of-canadian...
> celluloses, mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, modified starches, lecithins, carrageenans, phosphates, gums, and pectins. Some recent studies have indicated that emulsifiers can disturb gut bacteria and promote inflammation, potentially increasing susceptibility to cardiovascular issues.[0]
It's marketing, distribution, etc. I don't think inflation is their excuse to squeeze more money out of you as it is to spend more in other areas of the business, as they should.
Like British housing, horribly overpriced and half of it has mould.