Part 3 of Increasing Food costs

    Have you noticed lately that grocery store products seem to have been zapped with a shrink ray? Marketing terms such as "value added", "Giant sized", "bonus Product", "less packaging", and others are now appearing on the food that we eat. Instead of raising prices, which we would notice a lot, the food is shrinking in size. Manufacturers are quick to point out their increasing costs of fuel and food components. They show consumer surveys or complaints about certain products to justify changes.
    Take Tropicana orange juice for example. The original size was 96 ounces now it is in a redesigned smaller container with 89 ounces at the same price. According to Tropicana the old design had "increased spillage and the new design is a VALUE-ADDED design". Another good one is Coffee. Traditionally coffee is sold by the pound. Several big name coffee manufacturers dropped the amount of coffee from 16 oz to 11 oz, the size of the can did not change. You just pay for the extra air. Folgers reduced its amount by 3 oz with the explanation " the puffed granules would make the same amount as the original 16 oz". Uh huh.
 Things are shrinking everywhere. Wrigley's gum has shrunk from 17 sticks to 15 with the new slim pack. Bounty towels has the "new" 25% thicker towels packaging. The "new" package is 128 sheets, the old package is 138 sheets, same price.

Behr has the new 116 oz "gallon" of paint. A gallon is 120 oz, 'nuff said. Peanut butter is a good one. Skippy has reduced their package by almost 2 oz by adding a larger indentation on the bottom of the container.

That is a trick that wine and spirits manufactures have used for years.Even Girl Scout cookies shrank this year. Like me did you notice that there were a lot fewer cookies in the box this year? Pet food is even smaller. Here's a money saving hint for dog food. Check with the local Co-op or Feed store. It's cheaper and sometimes you can get it by the truck load.
    Watch when buying "fresh" raw chicken these days. The packaging says 100% Natural with added rib meat. That's all well and good until you really look at the package. It also says "with up to 15% natural chicken broth". What this means is 15% of the chicken you just bought is water weight.

As an added bonus the "Broth" is mainly salt, which adds enough 8X the sodium to your NATURAL chicken. That's the same amount of salt that an order of fast food fries has on it. The manufactures are quick to say that this process, which is called Plumping, makes the makes the meat more tender and moist. Personally, I want just Chicken in my chicken. This is also now done with pork and beef. Not too long ago Coca-cola came out with small 8 oz cans of soda. They were marketed as a lighter, lower calorie drink. Basically they made us want them. Now they have redesigned the small sodas and made them even smaller. Dropping by a 1/2 oz these sodas are are called a "guilt free 90 calories". The new cans are taller and thinner than the old tiny cans. They have the appearance or more but are actually less. Its just another marketing ploy to get us to pay more for a lot less product.
    Probably the most outrageous decrease is tuna. Cans of Tuna used to be 7 oz. Now they are 5 oz, sort of. Look on the can at the serving size information. According to the LABEL, the can serves two. Serving size is 2 oz. That means that there is only 4 oz of meat in the can. You are paying for 1 oz of water or oil. At least the oil has more calories. The only true way to get real value for your ever shrinking dollar is to be very careful of what you buy. Pay close attention to the weight of the food and what is in it. Try and avoid the grocery store shrink ray.

**Thanks to www.mouseprint.org and www.theconsumerist.com for pictures and information