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Rising costs mean food companies are making snacks, sodas taste worse
- jstarfish 3y agoThey're skimping on quality control too. Every 3rd pack of Coke I buy these days is flat. Started during COVID and never got better.
- sushid 3y agoFlat coke 33% of the time seems hard to believe. Where do you live? Coke has hundreds of bottling partners worldwide and they only distribute the syrup to these bottling plants.
- jstarfish 3y agoI'd rather not disclose, but for what it's worth the subset of bottlers would be limited to those supplying Walmart, since that's where I buy the bulk of it. It really is bad enough that I ought to complain and provide lot numbers for free coupons. Other products (Diet Dr. Pepper) are unaffected; I don't know if they share bottlers.
- AlexandrB 3y agoI can honestly say I've never had a can of coke that was flat from any store, so this might be your regional bottlers messing things up.
- moate 3y agoSame. I'm in NJ, and have never had a flat Coke from an undamaged container (and if the can looks all smashed up, I've just poured those out). OP should def complain to corporate, something in their process is FUBAR if 1/3rd of the product is damaged. Though being who I am, I'd assume that has more to do with the handling of the produce by/at Walmart.
- jstarfish 3y agoIt's not visible or concealed damage, it really looks like poor QA. All cans (and it's always cans, not bottles) are visibly intact. Sometimes the can itself is "squishy" due to lack of gas. Other times they barely foam when poured. It's usually potable but wildly inconsistent in taste. Most are fine, but it's gotten too expensive to keep overlooking duds.
- rightbyte 3y agoWhen you say it I think I need to agree that cans have got flatter. I've noticed this in a lot of fields. Like small things stop being good. Like opening bags of spaghetti is impossible on many brands without scissors or having pasta everywhere after it bursts. When pulling the string on the foil around a cookie "foil cylinder" the string is misaligned with the cutout, so it doesn't work. Etc. I think the underlying issue is attrition. Workers have no time to get competent. Or the toxic management style of "not caring" is taking its toll and the senior engineers got fed up and quit instead of fighting management to make things good.
- rsynnott 3y ago> but for what it's worth the subset of bottlers would be limited to those supplying Walmart That would be ~all of them, I would think. The whole point of having loads of bottlers is to avoid having to haul the stuff very long distances; I think they'll normally just supply from whichever is closest.
- whatshisface 3y agoMaybe they'll bust a gang that gets together to sip one milliliter out of each of one third of the bottles at your local warehouse.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoCall the customer service number on the back. They really do appreciate that info.
- duderific 3y agoWeird - I don't drink Diet Coke anymore, but I remember thinking it was flatter than it used to be when I would open a can. I wonder if they're trying to skimp on CO2 or something.
- rightbyte 3y agoThat is maybe bumpy transports?
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoGood, hyperpalatable foods being less hyperpalatable might help reset some taste buds and help people tolerate somewhat more "real" flavors. Like the bitterness of veggies!
- squarefoot 3y agoSnacks tasting worse isn't necessarily a bad thing, health wise.
- deepfriedchokes 3y agoPeople will just lower their standards and normalize the lower quality. This stuff is engineered “food” after all. It just has to stimulate the right neurotransmitters. American chocolate case in point.
- bob1029 3y agoThis trend got me to stop eating junk food for good. This also extends to 100% of fast food and takeout. Beyond the crap quality, the cost of these options has become insane. The new ingredients are typically abysmal for your health by comparison. Good luck finding a chip not fried in safflower or sunflower oil in 2023. Seriously, go try right now. I am not a seed oil guy, but the statistical prevalence of these oils might have some impact on public health and the fact that no alternatives appear to exist (outside of boutique settings) does kill off some of my bullshit canaries. Food companies can't screw with the raw ingredients too much. It's a challenge to find certain things like actual chicken broth and sometimes I wonder if the onions are getting weaker, but you can more or less maintain the same quality you'd expect if you cook your own food. If you are time-sensitive, then cook more at a once to amortize your time investment. Your freezer isn't just for holding the crap that comes frozen at the grocery store. You can accumulate weeks worth of high-quality DIY rations with proper discipline. Think about how big a pot you could actually put on your stove. How many cubic feet is your oven? Do you have the ability to run a propane burner outside? You can make a month's worth of lunch in 3 hours. Think about the economics of that at scale. Sure, you would spend a solid week cooking, but then you would have several amazing meal options to choose from for an entire financial quarter. Every now and then I'll sample a bit of trash like Oreos or Cheezits at someone else's house, but every time I decide I never want to buy these products again. If I really get a strong hankering for some cheezits, I'll bake my own. That's also how I keep myself in check on fitness - If I don't want to cook it, then I am not going to eat it.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoLikewise. I've lost about 60 lbs over the past year and I have corporate greed, in part, to thank for it. Most of it costs more, delivers less quantity and uses worse ingredients. Thanks for being greed-driven entities of shit, Corps! My waistline and partner thank you!
- hombre_fatal 3y agoAre you saying you think it’s better to fry potatoes in butter?
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- prvc 3y ago>Ferrero angered fans in 2017 by reducing the amount of cocoa in Nutella Hazelnut spread was originally invented in response to a shortage of cocoa.
- AlexandrB 3y agoA few years ago I noticed that Nutella just didn't taste as good to me anymore. I assumed I was just getting old... Interesting. My personal pet peeve is carrageenan in everything. It makes ice cream and cream cheese have an unnaturally smooth texture that's quite off-putting.
- mrguyorama 3y agoI loved Nutella for 20 years but stopped when I realized it's just a jar of palm oil full of cocoa powder, sugar, and a drop of hazelnut flavor. Might as well eat a jar of crisco. It also makes it's price absolute bullshit, since palm oil isn't exactly expensive.
- PcChip 3y ago>Might as well eat a jar of crisco I'd rather eat a jar of palm oil to be honest
- antisthenes 3y ago> A few years ago I noticed that Nutella just didn't taste as good to me anymore. I assumed I was just getting old... People frequently lose their "sweet tooth" as they get older. It's a normal thing for snacks you had as a kid to taste too sweet for you in adulthood.
- ReptileMan 3y agoWell - as an Easter European here - the Nutella made for Eastern Europe always tasted like shit compared to the one produced for Germany or Italy. I think the German one was the best. Also Nutella is getting shittier globally. Any making home made gianduia paste is quite easy - you need a good coverture chocolate, butter, hazelnut nut butter and a dash of vanilla. And it tasted better than everything that Nutella has.
- sharadov 3y agoThat's why the market for high-end snacks is booming. We mostly eat home-cooked meals, but have kids and they want junk from time to time. And the snacks at Trader Joe's, Sprouts and Costco taste amazing. Junk is junk, but you can find chips that are less salty, and chocolates that are not overly sweet.
- nothercastle 3y agoI’m surprised that the mainstream brands aren’t bringing back “classic” flavors and changing double for the premium market like coke does with mexi/classic coke. I’d buy Oreo classics for example if they are made with sugar and less gross filling.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoA lot of "classic" flavors cannot be brought back since trans fats were banned (as of mid 2018 in the USA).
- izzydata 3y agoThey would have to admit that their current Orea has differed from the past despite being marketed as the same Orea that it always had been.
- SilasX 3y agoBut they definitely do this with sodas, occasionally bringing back the sugar formulation.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoIn the context of this conversation they're both "junk food" so it makes sense to group them. But soda and cookies are quite different things and it makes some sense to me that people could have different consumption patterns and tolerance for change between them. I don't want to give them toooo much credit here but also I have to assume whatever industrial food giant owns all these brands has spent a lot of money on the question of how far they can cut costs on each individual thing without completely destroying the brand.
- Ancalagon 3y agoI don’t know if it’s related or if it’s because I’m getting older - processed snacks bother my stomach a lot more than they used to. Definitely could be my own anecdotal issues though
- ReptileMan 3y agoI would guess they cut the normal sugar with some sweeteners.
- nothercastle 3y agoSomeone should make a website to track changes. See if we can create some sort of historical record. I’d love to be able to look up if my favorite brand is now crap.
- prvc 3y ago>Someone should make a website to track changes Why not you?
- nothercastle 3y agoI’m not hungry for it. Other priorities
- quantumwoke 3y agoThis may be a contributor to the popularity of stores like Erewhon where $20 smoothies may be more representative of actual cost of ingredients compared to mass produced items.
- vidanay 3y agoNot to be confused with Erehwon Mountain Supply (where the prices were also outrageous.)
- xacky 3y agoThey recently made blue Pepsi really sour, I can only drink the Max version now.
- masfuerte 3y agoIt's not just the quality of the ingredients. Snack manufacturers in the UK are under pressure from the government to make their snacks more healthy so they are, for example, reducing salt. Twiglets and Krackawheat, which were my favourite snack and cracker, are both trash now. It's been over a year and I'm still ticked off about it.
- post_break 3y agoOreos got much worse it’s not just me. Same with chips ahoy. The prices skyrocketed too. I bought store brand until those rose to the price of name brand and then just stopped buying them. I miss them, but not at that price. The savior currently is dollar tree thin mints for $1.25, those are a steal.
- neogodless 3y agoThe change in Oreos has left me rather sad! I suspect Fig Newtons are on this list. Our grocery chain puts out generic versions that taste much better!
- nikole9696 3y agoThis might explain my recent experience too. I've been on a health journey and stopped eating most junk some time back. Recently, I decided to go ahead and splurge and get a chocolate bar that I always used to love. It tasted like hot garbage. Whether that's because my taste buds have changed or the product did is probably debatable, but I'm thrilled it's no longer a temptation to buy it! They ruined Cadbury Eggs years ago for me, and now "fun size" snickers too!
- EA-3167 3y agoCheck the ingredients in that chocolate, and it will probably have something called "PGPR" in the list. PGPR is a flavorless, odorless, waxy solid with a similar (but not identical) melting profile to cocoa butter. Now cocoa butter is expensive and getting more expensive, and companies like Reese's, Cadbury's and a lot of others just started cutting much of the cocoa butter out and added in PGPR as filler. That's just one way these products became flavorless, waxy, and generally unpleasant. Of course to combat this more sugar is often added, just to keep people coming back. More broadly though highly processed food is just too salty, too sweet, and often has a background of off-flavors... but it takes time away from them to start noticing it.
- MochaDen 3y agoPGPR is polyglycerol polyricinoleate -- an emulsifier made from glycerol and fatty acids. It's used to modify the flowability of molten chocolate and is typically less than 1/2 percent of the chocolate mix. If a company is using more than that the chocolate probably isn't going to harden... It's one of the hundreds of "mostly harmless" additives you see everywhere these days not a filler. Whether all these additives are really ok once you put them in every single thing has yet to be seen.
- nikole9696 3y agoThat makes a lot of sense. I recall thinking that it just tasted like slightly chocolate flavored sugar and was waxy - no flavor at all, just sweet and waxy. I guess you get what you pay for - my other splurge lately was a tiny chocolate from a specialty shop that was $1 for a single small piece, which I balked at, but it was DELICIOUS.
- diogenescynic 3y agoOne anecdote—the new rice crispy treat formula tastes disgusting.
- recursivedoubts 3y agoHuh. Wonder if this makes it into the inflation numbers...
- massifist 3y agoI've sworn for years that Hostess changed the Twinkie ingredients but no one seems to believe me. They tell me that my tastes have probably changed.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoI think it happened after they closed down and reopened, they probably adjusted the recipe after that.
- sydbarrett74 3y agoSince going in the direction of keto, most sweets to me now taste like sugary cardboard.