Democratic lawmakers accuse companies of shrinking product sizes while charging consumers the same price
It’s becoming a common experience for Americans going to the grocery store: your bag of chips seems lighter, your favorite drink comes in a slimmer bottle, and you’re running out of laundry detergent more quickly than usual. And yet things are staying the same price.
On Monday two Democratic lawmakers launched an attempt to get to the bottom of the phenomena, accusing three major companies, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills, of shrinking the size of products while charging consumers the same price – a price-gouging practice known as “shrinkflation”.
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“Shrinking the size of a product in order to gouge consumers on the price per ounce is not innovation, it’s exploitation,” Warren and Dean said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this price gouging is a widespread problem, with corporate profits driving over half of inflation.”
Right, I mean the issue isn’t necessarily the smaller serving size, it’s the much higher price per quantity of product. That said it isn’t all upside since the volume of a container increases faster than its surface area and therefore larger packages use less packaging material per quantity of product leading to less trash (assuming the product is fully consumed and not partially thrown away).
There’s a balancing act in play where the ideal size is the average amount that a person would consume within the products shelf life (once opened). That minimizes food waste and excess packaging material.
Since averages when applied to people are notoriously bad (see E.G. attempts at making an average fighter pilot seat) it’s best to offer a variety of package sizes so that consumers can purchase the one that best meets their consumption needs. So as to not encourage over consumption though, the cost of packaging materials should probably be averaged and applied to the quantity of product such that price per quantity of product remains linear instead of being cheaper as the volume of the container increases.
Standardizing ‘serving size’ would help too.
The ‘serving size’ of an 7.5-ounce can of Coke is… one can.
The ‘serving size’ of a 12-ounce can of Coke is… one can.
The ‘serving size’ of a 16-ounce bottle of Coke is… one bottle
The ‘serving size’ of a 20-ounce bottle of Coke is… one bottle.
The ‘serving size’ of a 2 liter bottle of Coke is… about six.
No wonder everyone ignores that phrase.
Those serving sizes actually make sense though. The ones that don’t are for instance a small bag of chips with a serving size like 1.5 servings where it’s very obvious the serving size was picked not based on the expected consumption (I’m certain the expectation is that the entire bag will be eaten in one sitting), but in order to make the nutritional information seem more reasonable. Or a single candybar with a serving size of 2.5.
There needs to be a distinction between single serving packaging vs. multi-serving packaging (which should be resealable), and that should be based on actual consumption not attempts to massage the nutritional into.
“Serving sizes” have always been arbitrary numbers set by the manufacturer, and yes they’re often ridiculous because they try to cheat the math. But I think they did make them start adding “per package” nutrition facts for non-resealable containers to combat this.
I don’t feel like it does make sense for all of those different sizes except the largest being one serving. Especially when the largest is more than twice as big as the smallest.
It goes back to my earlier point about average person. A 12oz can might be a single serving to you, but only a half serving to someone else. By offering different sized bottles/cans the consumer can purchase the single serving size appropriate to them (with matching accurate nutritional info). What shouldn’t happen though is for instance a 16oz bottle using the nutritional info from a 12oz bottle and just adjusting the servings per container to be ~1.3.