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> To be cheeky You should have spent a little bit more time reading the article than the admittedly poor headline. The article isn't about making "more nutriti

> To be cheeky You should have spent a little bit more time reading the article than the admittedly poor headline. The article isn't about making "more nutritional food compete easier with packaged food", it's about how packaged /products/ (not just food) are stealthily shrinking as prices remain fixed so as to slowly increase effective unit price to the end consumer. That is the point of the article, and your comment has nothing to do with it.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
I did read the article. It's solely concerned with packaged food. Boxes of Cocoa Puffs and other crap are getting smaller. You confused an opinion I introduced in my comment as a summary of the article. I'm claiming that there's a silver lining in packaged food getting smaller. I don't think there's much interesting discussion about the article itself. "Hey, yeah, I did notice my Ovaltine canisters getting smaller." So brace yourself for more people making higher level commentary than that.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > It's solely concerned with packaged food. No, it's not. Toilet paper is one of the main examples that is used in the article along with food. This is exactly my point. You clearly didn't read the article closely enough to understand the point it's trying to make.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    I just went back and looked to see if I missed some after-the-ad section. After re-reading the article, I think it's pretty dishonest to assert that I'm missing its point. That it mentions some things beyond food didn't distract me from the things (the bulk of the article) it does say about food. Its only two charts are about food. This useless exchange must be why the charge of "u didn't read the article" is discouraged in HN's guidelines. In your quest to unmask me as a filthy article-dodger, you also didn't contribute to the discussion beyond mentioning that in an article chiefly about food, some other packaged goods were brought up. And presumably it was a grave error on my part to only talk about the main charge of the article -- which is the only part I had something to say about -- and not the whole domain of implications -- which I have nothing to say about.
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      > In your quest to unmask me as a filthy article-dodger > it was a grave error on my part to only talk about the main charge of the article -- which is the only part I had something to say about -- and not the whole domain of implications -- which I have nothing to say about. That's more the issue, isn't it? You don't have anything to say about the whole domain of implications? Come on. I'm sure you can think of some. I dislike crappy clickbait articles as much as the next person, and I don't deny that this article belabored a point that could have easily been condensed into something much terser and to the point, which is that it's borderline false advertising to use this kind of dark UX pattern with packaging. Moreover, I disagree that "anything that makes more nutritional food compete easier with packaged food seems like a good thing" when you don't have to look very far into the past to see masses of people killed by famine time [1] and time [2] again. Obesity is surely not aided by lower quality food, but it surely is even less aided by an increasingly sedentary lifestyle that is sweeping much of the world, and no amount of good nutrition will save folks from that. It might be true that packaged food (and packaged products) becoming lower quality makes "nutritional food compete" more easily with it, but that presupposes that we should accept that packaged products are out to dishonestly swindle us, and that this is just the price of doing business. You notice that "the only thing perishable at my local 7/11 is a mealy saran wrapped apple and it has to somehow compete with all the tastier packaged food" but have you thought about why that is the case? Have you thought about the economic incentives, and all the lobbying that is in place to create continual financial incentives to adulterated packaged food created by a megalith of large corporate lock-in? Do you think that for those who have the means to eat higher quality food, they won't be buying from a 7/11 anyways, and for those who cannot afford that, they're stuck eating increasingly poorer quality trash which doesn't nourish them and slowly starves them? And the whole domain of implications of that -- again, you have nothing to say there about that? Come on. Whether you think that it's something that's good or bad, something that can or could be stopped or not -- I'm sure you can think of a few. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > You clearly didn't read the article closely enough It's against the site rules here to accuse people of not reading the article.
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      It's not an accusation. The commenter was factually inaccurate and missed a crucial detail which is very material in determining what the article is actually about. If you miss that, I think that it would be a little bit ironic to make a cheeky comment about what the article was trying to say.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        The rules say > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article.
        yowlingcat 6y ago
        Fair. Maybe the rules say '"Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."' to avoid this stoking this exact kind of inflammation and defensiveness, which detracts from the discourse. You have a point.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
perl4ever 6y ago
I already know that shrinking a package is a common tactic, but I also know it goes in cycles. For instance, long ago, spaghetti used to come in 1 lb boxes. Then I started seeing reduced size packages. Now it seems mostly back to 1 lb. My reaction to the headline is that the article is probably dumb and I don't want to read it, because the implication is that there is a new trend which will go on indefinitely until every food product is like a teaspoon. If the article was like, here's an interesting way in which economics and psychology interact to produce a discontinuous behavior in the marketplace, I'd be more positive. In other words, I have the same sour reaction as to most stuff these days - I hate journalism, clickbait, and ad-tech.
- _eht 6y ago
  >My reaction to the headline is that the article is probably dumb and I don't want to read it Other than being a bored, basic troll, why are you here adding useless cruft and commenting to multiple people on this particular thread? You are really just making yourself look silly at this point.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I think describing what a good article on the subject would be like is constructive. Do you have one?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- svieira 6y ago
  Actually, they cite that behavior _exactly_: > Still, in the end, Dworsky says that the sneakiness, and the sense that companies have a low opinion of their customers' intelligence, is what gets to him most. Over his years as a professional observer of grocery shelves, he has noticed an interesting pattern: it is common for a downsized product to come full circle. First a product drops from 16oz to 14.5oz. Then, as the years pass, maybe it goes down to 11oz. Perhaps it even drops to 8oz. Then, a 16oz size appears again. But this time, it's the super or mega size. And the cost is much, much higher than that of the original.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> stealthily shrinking They have their weight or volume printed on them.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I did read the article. It's solely concerned with packaged food. Boxes of Cocoa Puffs and other crap are getting smaller. You confused an opinion I introduced in my comment as a summary of the article. I'm claiming that there's a silver lining in packaged food getting smaller. I don't think there's much interesting discussion about the article itself. "Hey, yeah, I did notice my Ovaltine canisters getting smaller." So brace yourself for more people making higher level commentary than that.

yowlingcat 6y ago
> It's solely concerned with packaged food. No, it's not. Toilet paper is one of the main examples that is used in the article along with food. This is exactly my point. You clearly didn't read the article closely enough to understand the point it's trying to make.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  I just went back and looked to see if I missed some after-the-ad section. After re-reading the article, I think it's pretty dishonest to assert that I'm missing its point. That it mentions some things beyond food didn't distract me from the things (the bulk of the article) it does say about food. Its only two charts are about food. This useless exchange must be why the charge of "u didn't read the article" is discouraged in HN's guidelines. In your quest to unmask me as a filthy article-dodger, you also didn't contribute to the discussion beyond mentioning that in an article chiefly about food, some other packaged goods were brought up. And presumably it was a grave error on my part to only talk about the main charge of the article -- which is the only part I had something to say about -- and not the whole domain of implications -- which I have nothing to say about.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    > In your quest to unmask me as a filthy article-dodger > it was a grave error on my part to only talk about the main charge of the article -- which is the only part I had something to say about -- and not the whole domain of implications -- which I have nothing to say about. That's more the issue, isn't it? You don't have anything to say about the whole domain of implications? Come on. I'm sure you can think of some. I dislike crappy clickbait articles as much as the next person, and I don't deny that this article belabored a point that could have easily been condensed into something much terser and to the point, which is that it's borderline false advertising to use this kind of dark UX pattern with packaging. Moreover, I disagree that "anything that makes more nutritional food compete easier with packaged food seems like a good thing" when you don't have to look very far into the past to see masses of people killed by famine time [1] and time [2] again. Obesity is surely not aided by lower quality food, but it surely is even less aided by an increasingly sedentary lifestyle that is sweeping much of the world, and no amount of good nutrition will save folks from that. It might be true that packaged food (and packaged products) becoming lower quality makes "nutritional food compete" more easily with it, but that presupposes that we should accept that packaged products are out to dishonestly swindle us, and that this is just the price of doing business. You notice that "the only thing perishable at my local 7/11 is a mealy saran wrapped apple and it has to somehow compete with all the tastier packaged food" but have you thought about why that is the case? Have you thought about the economic incentives, and all the lobbying that is in place to create continual financial incentives to adulterated packaged food created by a megalith of large corporate lock-in? Do you think that for those who have the means to eat higher quality food, they won't be buying from a 7/11 anyways, and for those who cannot afford that, they're stuck eating increasingly poorer quality trash which doesn't nourish them and slowly starves them? And the whole domain of implications of that -- again, you have nothing to say there about that? Come on. Whether you think that it's something that's good or bad, something that can or could be stopped or not -- I'm sure you can think of a few. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > You clearly didn't read the article closely enough It's against the site rules here to accuse people of not reading the article.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    It's not an accusation. The commenter was factually inaccurate and missed a crucial detail which is very material in determining what the article is actually about. If you miss that, I think that it would be a little bit ironic to make a cheeky comment about what the article was trying to say.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      The rules say > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article.
      - yowlingcat 6y ago
        Fair. Maybe the rules say '"Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."' to avoid this stoking this exact kind of inflammation and defensiveness, which detracts from the discourse. You have a point.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

perl4ever 6y ago

I already know that shrinking a package is a common tactic, but I also know it goes in cycles. For instance, long ago, spaghetti used to come in 1 lb boxes. Then I started seeing reduced size packages. Now it seems mostly back to 1 lb. My reaction to the headline is that the article is probably dumb and I don't want to read it, because the implication is that there is a new trend which will go on indefinitely until every food product is like a teaspoon. If the article was like, here's an interesting way in which economics and psychology interact to produce a discontinuous behavior in the marketplace, I'd be more positive. In other words, I have the same sour reaction as to most stuff these days - I hate journalism, clickbait, and ad-tech.

_eht 6y ago
>My reaction to the headline is that the article is probably dumb and I don't want to read it Other than being a bored, basic troll, why are you here adding useless cruft and commenting to multiple people on this particular thread? You are really just making yourself look silly at this point.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I think describing what a good article on the subject would be like is constructive. Do you have one?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
svieira 6y ago
Actually, they cite that behavior _exactly_: > Still, in the end, Dworsky says that the sneakiness, and the sense that companies have a low opinion of their customers' intelligence, is what gets to him most. Over his years as a professional observer of grocery shelves, he has noticed an interesting pattern: it is common for a downsized product to come full circle. First a product drops from 16oz to 14.5oz. Then, as the years pass, maybe it goes down to 11oz. Perhaps it even drops to 8oz. Then, a 16oz size appears again. But this time, it's the super or mega size. And the cost is much, much higher than that of the original.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> stealthily shrinking They have their weight or volume printed on them.