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This is a process Brazilians know well. Chocolate bars used to have 200g. Some now have less than 100g. Toilet paper rolls used to have 50m; most now have 30m
by forinti 7y ago
This is a process Brazilians know well.
Chocolate bars used to have 200g. Some now have less than 100g. Toilet paper rolls used to have 50m; most now have 30m and some have only 10m.
This sort of thing started happening in the 1980s, because the government had frozen prices (that always works well). It became such a problem that now the law says that the packaging must clearly point out if the quantity inside has changed.
- burfog 7y agoToilet paper should be measured by volume, not length. Both width and thickness of the sheets can vary. For both, larger is better. All three measurements interact together when forming a wad of paper. All three contribute to the size of the wad.
- jml7c5 7y agoDensity also matters, or you could cheat and sell a roll of paper "fluff". Also, many people fold rather than wad.
- spacehome 7y agoYou could multiply all of those together to get mass.
- artwr 7y agoCue the heavy cardboard rolls in the middle.
- majewsky 7y ago> Also, many people fold rather than wad. This. Mass is just a nonsense unit for me as a folder. You might as well be advertising density or albedo. If anything, I'd want the base unit to be number of sheets * number of layers per sheet
- nootka 7y agoWadding is a sub-optimal wiping technique. www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3fterm=G.I.%2bbutt%2bwipe&=true That said, the general point of your post still stands.
- majewsky 7y agoWTF happened with this link? Fixed version: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=G.I.+butt+wipe https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=G.I.+butt+wi...
- gnicholas 7y ago> now the law says that the packaging must clearly point out if the quantity inside has changed. 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.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoOn the other hand a lot of candy gets bigger and bigger. I am pretty sure the candy bars and ice cream scoops I got when I was a kid were half of the current size. Or even less.
- dsparkman 7y agoI love to watch the shrinkage of ice cream. Over the past 10 years, the standard packaging of ice cream has gone from 1/2 gallon (1.9 L) to where they are currently at 1.4 L, with prices staying relatively the same.
- gnicholas 7y agoThere’s also the trend toward “whipped” ice cream which has fewer calories and lower COGS because it is mixed with air.
- geodel 7y agoHuh, I see most of the time in US price/oz is mentioned along with price of item. This greatly helps me decide if buying larger package could save me some money with having to do calculation myself, which I would have to do in my country.
- gnicholas 7y agoYes, this is helpful for comparing two items on the shelf next to each other, and it is present in some stores. But there are only a few items that I actually remember the price/oz between visits. Mostly I remember only the price per package (if anything). For example, Triscuits and Wheat Thins are a good buy at $2/pack, and OK at $2.50/pack. But when they shrink the pack, I'm SOL because I have no idea what the price/oz equivalent is. 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.
- dane-pgp 7y agoI'd also like to see a law passed that requires each product to mention on its packaging if its ingredients (even just their relative proportions) have changed. This would apply to things like foods/drinks and also cleaning products. Of course companies would protest, claiming that their recipes are trade secrets, but we already require that products list their ingredients, and we protect trademarks for products, which seems unreasonable if companies can alter the contents of what is being protected, without telling customers. To be clear, though, I'm not actually advocating that the labels report precise amounts of each ingredient, but they should be forced to say something like "40% more salt" or "70% more water", at least next to the ingredients, and "New recipe" on the front (as many products already do).
- Proven 7y ago> I'd also like to see a law passed that requires So your "contribution" would be to use the threat of force to make producers spend even more money to redesign more complex labels which, all other things being equal, would result in even an smaller quantity of a product for the same price? Congratulations, you're qualified to work for government (or The Economist)!
- ekianjo 7y ago> I'd also like to see a law passed that requires each product to mention on its packaging if its ingredients (even just their relative proportions) have changed. This would apply to things like foods/drinks and also cleaning products. Ridiculous proposition. Formulations change pretty much constantly for various reasons (ingredients become more expensive, or you change suppliers, or you decide to adjust something to make the product better or cheaper or both), and adding bureaucratic friction as well as packaging redesign is completely impractical. Packaging can take several weeks if not month to produce and you would have to constantly throw them away with this kind of rule. Wasteful.
- unimployed 7y agoOk, but what is your better suggestion to solve the problem of quality or content creep that affects consumers and economic data? Perhaps there is a good way to have consumers be informed, or perhaps there isn’t. But at the very least, accurate data for economic statistics should be available since that same kind of data is available at batch levels for safety and compliance purposes.
- segfaultbuserr 7y agoAlso occurred in China after 2007. First it was just the usual inflation of the general level of price, the most obvious sign was the inflating price of food in supermarkets and meals in restaurants. However, as it progressed, the restaurant owners seemed to believe that, if they keep rising price, it would be extremely unpopular, so the prices kept roughly at the same level, but the amount of food in the dishes becomes smaller and smaller.
- odiroot 7y ago> Chocolate bars used to have 200g. Some now have less than 100g. I think it's a very good development.
- samsonradu 7y agoAgree! If there's any inflation I'd like to see it's for sugar products.
- 18pfsmt 7y agoSugars are heavily involved in inter cellular signaling we still do not understand at all. All sugars occur in nature within highly fibrous constituents. Fiber has been the helpful constituent on the side that helped with digestion of sugar, but when it isn't simultaneously present, it's a problem.