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Shrinkflation Tracker
- wackget 3y agoWhen submitting a weight, the site should allow you to submit a reference such as a newspaper article, an archived website, or other form of proof. And the proof should be publicly visible.
- martin82 3y agoNice idea, but that site seems to track only "food" that is basically poisonous to begin with. 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.
- atmanactive 3y agoGreat idea! I'm afraid this would require at least a hundred employees to keep it current and useful, though. But, as a society, we definitely need this. Maybe if some government agency could back it up?
- sanitycheck 3y agoA ton of automated scraping is what it needs. Just the main UK supermarket chains would do, as it seems rather British in the choice of products even though there's no pricing actually shown.
- lozenge 3y agoThe packages are changing so fast/often now that the shelf labels, online sizes and unit prices are often out of date. (Yes this is illegal, no nobody cares because it's £0.05 per product and they aren't doing it on purpose, they just don't make it a priority to have correct data).
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhy would this benefit society? Price per unit is a trivial calculation, and most grocery stores already show it on the price tag. 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/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MDLZ/mondelez/prof...
- read_if_gay_ 3y agoi can't believe the sole use you could think of is timing the market on junk food
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eatsyourtacos 3y ago>Why would this benefit society? 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
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIt is already open information that pretty much every seller of everything in the whole world tries to sell for as high of a price that they think can get. And that purchasing power of currencies will go down over time.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago>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.
- m3kw9 3y agoFor junk food which is what this mostly tracks, shrinkflation is good for people’s healths.
- ilyt 3y agoWell, till you need to get 2 burgers instead of one to feel full...
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThat is the point, people eat fewer burgers because they cannot afford more.
- tristor 3y agoYes, GP is absolutely correct, all the people in the developing world who can't afford food are much healthier than those of us in the West, that live long enough and eat enough to deal with diseases of obesity that primarily affect one after 60 years of age. /s
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThe context is not affording junk food, not not affording food. Most burgers qualify as junk food.
- tristor 3y agoSure. Starvation is more deadly than obesity however, and globally more prevalent.
- lotsofpulp 3y agohttps://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and... >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-hunger-numbers-rose-to-as-many-as-828-million-in-2021 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.
- abeppu 3y agoOddly, search only covers brand names? https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=soap https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=soap <- zero results https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=dove https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=dove <- result has 'soap' in name
- skinner927 3y agoOreo doesn’t work.
- kernx16 3y agoitd be interesting if tracking price is also included, although I can imagine that would be insanely difficult to keep track of for many reasons. I love this idea and hope it continues to grow.
- syassami 3y ago@samlader - now overlay the graphs with EPS growth * -1 to see correlation
- phailhaus 3y agoSuper cool! Very clean, nice font. Some UX things I noticed: 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!
- boxed 3y agoI wonder why 0% items are shown on the big list at all. Like having a page of murderers with random innocent people with a text label under "not a murderer" :P
- seabass-labrax 3y agoThat would actually be beneficial to the innocent people if it gave them indemnity to prosecution! It's better to be cleared of a suspected crime than never prosecuted, in my opinion*. * assuming the availability of pro bono legal aid as part of social welfare, a key part of any judicial system.
- boxed 3y agoThat is a weird take. I'm pretty sure being accused of for example pedophilia can destroy someones life without a conviction.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoThanks for your response. I think it might be a cultural thing; although I've never been charged for anything myself and so have limited understanding of what that might feel like, I would never judge someone negatively for a prosecution of any crime unless they were actually sentenced. Accusations of sex offences might admittedly be less comfortable to have been known for, but if you win your case there is no (legal) way for anyone to destroy your career; the worst I can imagine happening is that family members distance themselves from you - again, a cultural and personal response, not a legal one. 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.
- hhthrowaway1230 3y agoWould be nice to have the actual owning organisations in there. i bet these are largely subsidiaries of the same mother company.
- corinroyal 3y agoThis was my reaction too. I'd like to see which conglomerates and their divisions are the worst offenders. To break it down by brands alone makes it hard to identify who to name and shame.
- karim79 3y agoI remember using this app[0] on my phone years ago, I just checked and they have an API. I'm not sure, but if I recall correctly this allowed you to scan barcodes of things and warn you if they are sub-brand or subsidiary of [evil company you wish to avoid]. [0] https://www.buycott.com/api https://www.buycott.com/api
- doubled112 3y agoWas it just based on that chart about the illusion of choice?
- Vicinity9635 3y agoIs this the one that explicitly won't let you boycott products by Israeli companies? edit: Yep https://honestreporting.com/fighting-bds-with-buycotts/ 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.
- karim79 3y agoWasn't aware of that, also my use-case during the brief time I messed with it was trying to see how clever it was at identifying companies which use animal testing to develop their products. Thank you for the link.
- M3L0NM4N 3y agoI don't particularly care about shrinkflation. It gets calculated in the CPI (obviously) and most of the time it's goods that are unhealthy and overpriced to begin with.
- cactusplant7374 3y agoBut a lot of us enjoy eating unhealthy foods. And as long as we don't have diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc then it's not a problem.
- switch007 3y agoI think it's just a wild theory at this stage, but some doctors are saying that eating unhealthy food leads to diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure
- cactusplant7374 3y agoIf one is sedentary and obese, yes.
- andy_ppp 3y agoSure, most of these items also cost next to nothing to make too and costs to actually make have barely risen (as a percentage of the item cost). So mostly it’s companies using inflation to squeeze more money out of people.
- M3L0NM4N 3y agoI agree that material cost is not a major component of the cost in a lot of these products. 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.
- phreeza 3y agoIt's basically a dark pattern. Not illegal or anything, but designed to mask relevant information from the consumer.
- Hard_Space 3y agoI have thought about developing this site for the last 3-4 years! This is exactly what it would have looked like. Thanks for saving me the trouble (if I ever had got round to it).
- karim79 3y agoI would love to see something like this for tracking the sizes of the content catalogs of streaming services like Netflix, D+, and the other streaming services which go out of their way to create the illusion of sitting on top of an infinite content library. To see how those values change over time, while subscription fees remain the same (at best) would be quite revealing.
- not_the_fda 3y agoThe idea is nice, but it seems to be tracking junk food, which you probably shouldn't eat and can easily avoid. I'd be more interested in home goods such as soap, detergent; and food staples.
- Koeniggimeno 3y agoThere’s a listing for soap on the front page, I don’t think it’s confined to just junk food
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoSo is shrinkflation actually included in official inflation numbers? If all bars of soap in the country become smaller by 10%, does 'official' inflation number go up? Are the folks tracking official inflation index equipped to measure all the various products per kilo, etc?
- vuln 3y ago“Inflation? There’s no inflation, we’ve created millions of jobs and pay has increased!” - Current Administration
- vuln 3y agoThe truth hurts more than the downvotes.
- hankchinaski 3y agoin the uk we measure the price of a basket of goods, which includes quantity adjustment. So packaging size is irrelevant. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/methodologies/consumerpricesindicestechnicalmanual2019#weights https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/meth... >The simplest form of direct adjustment is quantity adjustment, which is used when there is a permanent size change in an item.
- kepano 3y agoIn a high-inflation environment your profits are constantly shrinking. The problem also affects small and independent makers of all kinds. 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. [1]: https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1702401372661096477 https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1702401372661096477
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agothis is an accurate description of shrinkflation, though not a good justification of it 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.
- adamc 3y agoBeing honest doesn't pay as well. If it did, they would just raise the price. They are hoping you don't notice.
- kepano 3y agoI'm not defending CPG companies. I'm pointing out that if you're an indie maker inflation is a problem you need to contend with in your own pricing. Once you start thinking about it from that perspective, you realize how difficult of a problem it is to solve in a way that feels fair to customers. 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.
- elurg 3y agoMost of these products are extremely unhealthy so shrinking portions should be considered a public service.
- Koeniggimeno 3y agoGreat Idea! Perfectly executed, great site to give some awareness to the average consumer.
- maxbond 3y agoVery cool! Where are you sourcing data from?
- nowooski 3y agoI ticker arrows could use explanation. I assume green is good and red is bad, but it's not immediately clear what the units are ect.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoLove the idea, but how far back do the data go? 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 https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=butter These jagoffs reduced the quantity by 20%, which is definitely enough to mess up recipes.
- KomoD 3y ago> but how far back do the data go? Anywhere from 1297 to 9248 apparently, I guess he must have some kind of time traveler
- MikusR 3y agoIn EU prices for food stuff have to also list price per KG.
- sebazzz 3y agoYes, but no history.
- cj 3y agoThis is also common in the US. 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-Shot-2016-08-10-at-4.48.23-PM.png https://supersafeway.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-S...
- ericpauley 3y ago> I imagine barely anyone actually shops that way. This feels so foreign to me; I largely ignore the overall price and shop by unit prices within a reasonable size range.
- belval 3y agoI think the commenter you are responding to does not have enough faith in humanity. Most people I know (anecdotal and biased sampling I know) do check that number when shopping, especially for interchangeable items that don't have a well-know brand such as flour or baking powder.
- gen3 3y agoAncidotal, but myself and many of my friends shop this way. I've found that sometimes the larger bottle isn't cheaper per unit
- Crunchified 3y agoHere in the US, while unit pricing is commonly displayed, I frequently find that a store will use a wide variety of units, thereby negating the ability to easily compare items in this way. For the same type of product I may see cost per ounce, cost per pound, cost per each, cost per dozen, etc. for various sizes and brands. It's maddening, insulting, and probably in most cases malicious.
- realjohng 3y agoFabulous… I heart data
- smath 3y ago% change is over what time frame? YoY?
- switch007 3y agoWarning: rant about brands 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!
- jstanley 3y agoI also find the Lidl Ginger Nut biscuits are vastly superior to the McVities ones, which taste burnt. I don't understand why McVities aren't better.
- switch007 3y ago> I don't understand why McVities aren't better. People pay McVities to brainwash them in to thinking they're better, so they don't need to be better LOL
- vmilner 3y agoI bought Lidl Tower Gate Chocolate Digestive Biscuits because of the annoying look-like-mcvities-packaging thing, but they're actually pretty good... https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/14/590x/secondary/chocolate-digestive-biscuits-McVities-4611747.avif?r=1678895799462 https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/14/590x/seconda...
- xwdv 3y agoI don’t get it, would people rather pay higher prices up front? 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.
- waffleiron 3y agoIf it’s two gummy bears a year, a decade later it’s an empty bag.
- daveoc64 3y agoA lot of people resent how sneaky shrinkflation feels. 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.
- xwdv 3y agoThey wouldn’t feel tricked, but then they’d be pissed off at the rising prices, which affects their ability to enjoy the product. 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.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoPeople just like to feel outraged, apparently.
- chucksmash 3y ago
- _aavaa_ 3y agoOn mobile some of the prices show up as 8E210, which is a hilarious bug
- kamikaz1k 3y agoseeing "Do not know how to serialize a BigInt"
- salawat 3y agoThat's just a sign they knocked a few bits off datatype but are still trying to pass it off as the same thing. Serializers, however, are onto them.
- vmilner 3y agoSainsbury’s don’t like changing the weights encoded in their urls so although Cadburys 180g “Price locked” Fruit and Nut has been shrinkflated for over a year the link is still: https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-milk-fruit---nut-200g 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
- wppick 3y agoAnother source of shrinkflation is changing ingredients. Something that used to be 50% water is now 75% water as an example. Another is changing from olive oil to canola or palm or, and things like that.
- purplecats 3y agowe need github tracking for the changes in metadata for products, like we do for legislation or the terms of use (like the one that unity deleted)
- chongli 3y agoOne of the worst offenders in this regard is packages of frozen meat products such as chicken wings, chicken fingers, nuggets, etc. They used to just contain the breaded meat with the net weight printed on the box (usually 2 lb). 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!
- freeqaz 3y agoThat's amazing that it isn't illegal to do that. I wonder if the laws will force companies to list out how much weight each component is like that. 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.)
- djmips 3y agoSort of related is chocolate. I feel like 'pure' chocolate is a loss leader and all of the other types with mixed in caramel bits etc are a way of selling you a bunch of cheaper stuff for the same weight and price! Better to just buy the least adulterated chocolate for the best deal.
- spandextwins 3y agoRonald Reagan used to have the misery index
- DanHulton 3y agoI feel like Reagan used to _cause_ the misery index.
- spandextwins 3y agoThey all do
- eppsilon 3y agohttp://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.aspx http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.aspx
- patrickwalton 3y agoWe saw shrinkflation with our apartments when they went from a central dumpster to expecting everyone in an 8-unit complex to line up cans on the road
- jqjqjqjq 3y agoShould be able to sort by highest to lowest. Name and shame'em!
- lwansbrough 3y agoI would like to be able to sort by change delta. Cool site!
- alex_young 3y agoI don't really understand the recent focus on this. Shrinkflation has always been a thing, and it seems like it shouldn't be strongly correlated with actual inflation, since the critical equation is something like how much material should a given product contain to provide enough value to consumers, or in other words it's equally advantageous to optimize the value of your product in times of low or high inflation and thus optimize margins. Maybe we just care more about it when we see prices raising in general? IDK.
- prepend 3y agoIt’s not a recent focus, it’s a continual focus. 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.
- c0pium 3y agoYou don’t need to sift through it, though. There’s no prize for catching companies in the act. Figure out which toothpaste you want, decide whether youre willing to spend the money, then buy it or don’t. They do it because otherwise people will complain incessantly about price increases and this way people only complain intermittently about shrinkflation.
- sgu999 3y agoNice project, very clean etc. 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.
- throwanem 3y agoToothpaste and soap aren't healthy?
- bumby 3y agoSome toothpaste can be a net-negative, like those with abrasives. It's actually the mechanical aspect of brushing that does most of the hygiene. Frothing and minty taste of toothpaste are mostly marketing. 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).
- cactusplant7374 3y agoMostly marketing or people actually enjoy these things and they encourage good oral hygiene?
- bumby 3y agoI guess, yes, from a behavioral change standpoint they’re effective, even if they don’t objectively contribute to hygiene themselves.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago> Some toothpaste can be a net-negative, like those with abrasives 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.
- pazimzadeh 3y agoRecently I noticed that the baguettes at Whole Foods (in St. Louis) are about 2 inches shorter than before. They are the same price.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoIn an ideal world, one UPC code would identify only one product with one set of ingredients and one weight. Want to make a "+20% free!" package? New UPC! Want to change the contents from 16% cacao to 14% cacao and some more sugar? Sure, new UPC. 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.
- Horffupolde 3y agoYou are free to do that. UPC is a private standard.
- acover 3y agoThe business just make store specific upcs like mattresses. Same cookies, different number
- rendaw 3y agoI thought this too, re: for Amazon review farming, but products are never homogeneous from the start. 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.
- saulrh 3y agoThen extend product codes until every single individual batch - or even every single individual item - has a unique ID. Store information hierarchically if you have to to save space, but we have the technology today to track every single component of our entire supply chain. The automotive, aerospace, and defense industries already do this. The food industry even has the processes in place, they just only do the bare minimum to execute a recall when the FDA calls them on their shit. Even pet food can pull it off! All we have to do is make manufacturers go that rest of the way.
- Ancalagon 3y agoShould probably complete the price point review prior to allowing the data points to be shown. This dove bar has a price point from the year 9999 and its messing with the whole graph: https://www.shrinkflation.io/products/535 https://www.shrinkflation.io/products/535
- IAmGraydon 3y agoThe worst part of shrinkflation is restaurants who have reduced the sizes of their meals, in my opinion. I’ve seen this quite a lot in everything from fast casual places like Cava to locally owned establishments.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat may not be a bad thing per se. In plenty of restaurants the amount of food in a serving is way too large for me and the alternative probably was to raise prices. In restaurants food isn't usually the high margin product, that's alcohol.
- c0pium 3y agoMost fast casual places don’t sell much alcohol.
- willio58 3y agoI've definitely experienced this with colgate toothpaste and sure enough it's on this list!
- zamadatix 3y agoFor some reason the same product often shows up multiple times in the list. And I don't mean "the product looks the same" I mean "the URL it links is even the exact same" .
- hinkley 3y agoI was just talking today to someone about how they don't like food from a certain global coffee chain anymore because their food has gotten kinda crappy. 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)
- cogman10 3y agoJust one more factor to consider, some ingredients are no longer available. 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-trim-trans-fats-from-popular-goodies/ https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2006/01/02/manufacturers-tri...
- hinkley 3y agoFair point. Were oreos always palm oil or were they lard back in the day? 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.
- skyyler 3y agoNo, they were partially hydrogenated soybean oil back in the day. Palm oil is thick at room temp, like partially hydrogenated oils are.
- imbusy111 3y agoA lot of it looks like candy, so it could be a good thing.
- jacobsenscott 3y agoWhat's the problem? You want to keep everything the same size and pay more? That's the other option. You know it works out to the same amount of stuff for the same amount of money, right?
- DoughnutHole 3y agoYes, because it’s easier to notice and adjust your purchasing decisions accordingly. The point of shrinkflation is to obfuscate the price increase and hope that some consumers don’t notice.
- andymal 3y agoThis is great! I wanted to add a product that I recently noticed was smaller, but I no longer use Google, so I'm unable to go through the submission process. Maybe if someone else sees this you can add Kingsford charcoal. 4-5 years ago bags came in a pack of 2x20 lb. Then 2022 they were 2x18lb. This year they are 2x16lb. Can't wait until we can just buy a 2 pack of briquettes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- steine65 3y agoVery cool. Looks like it could use some more controls to reduce bad data. For example the Dove year 9999 data point. I would love to see a list of Parent companies. Single brands will be hard to remember.
- furyofantares 3y agoI don't like that it's sneaky, but I would rather candy servings get smaller rather than prices get higher, if those are the options.
- akomtu 3y agoWhy does it track some irrelevant products? It should track things that matter: milk, bread, meat, fish, fruits and so on.
- c0pium 3y agoIt tracks things people actually buy.
- purplecats 3y agocan you automate this with amazon parsing?
- robertheadley 3y agoGreat, but manual input and seems to be focused on the UK. I think someone needs to brute force this problem.
- lucb1e 3y agoWanted to add a product, but you can't sign up for the site: you need to go sign up to Google first...
- incrudible 3y agoShrinkflation of these products is better than increased prices, because you should not eat/drink so much of this crap anyway.
- playerm1 3y agoWerther's Original did not betray us.
- Fatnino 3y agoI have an original Pringle's can from the late 70s or whenever it was. (yes, it used to have an apostrophe in the name). 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.
- dragonwriter 3y agoWhat a horrible UI and information presentation. What does the scrolling information even mean? Are the up/down arrows/percents tracking % change in package size, % change in per unit price resulting from the new package size, or…what? Are the listed package sizes the before or after sizes? Why if I go beyond the front page to the main list (which provides the same information and lack of explanation as the scroll, but with product pictures) and click on a product does it cause a crash to a “Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).” and why is the back button broken so that once this occurs, it stays on the error page even as the URL in the address bar walks back?
- thatxliner 3y agoCrowdsourced data?