Your Products Are Shrinking

In recent decades in America, the trend has been toward supersizing. A 2002 study by the American Journal of Public Health linking the increase in portion sizes to obesity found that “restaurants are using larger dinner plates... fast-food companies are using larger drink and French fry containers... (and) [i]dentical recipes for cookies and deserts in old and new editions of classic cookbooks such as Joy of Cooking specify fewer servings, meaning that portions are expected to be larger.”

According to a recent article in The New York Times, though, that trend — at least in the aisles of America’s supermarkets and big-box stores — has been changing.

In an effort to offset the recent increases in transportation and ingredient costs, companies have begun, in industry terms, “short-sizing” their products. In other words, the package size — and contents — of American staples such as Cheerios, Doritos, Tropicana orange juice and Hellmann’s mayonnaise has shrunk. A half-gallon of ice cream is often no longer a half-gallon, but 1.75 or 1.5 quarts. Prices, in most cases, have stayed the same.

These changes have not gone unnoticed among consumers. Unhappy shoppers have taken their complaints to cyberspace, ranting on company websites and on blogs, including Consumerist.

Both the article and an MSNBC video about the short-sizing trend recommend that consumers look not at package size, but unit price: the true indicator of food per dollar.

(Photo by ralphbijker)