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The Great 'Shrinking Food' Hunt
Comments
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The Schloer comment is true but for two weeks there's been a bogof so 1.5 litres for 1pound 03p As to Sainsburys Bran Flakes, the 1000grm pack is frequently cheaper than the 750grm pack....can somebody please explain the conspiracy in that one. I believe that the big players introduce new mind games all the time to deliberately confuse us. Look at the small print on the shelf stickers which shows the price per litre on Beer & Cider and watch it change from litres to pints at will. It is almost impossible to compare accurately without a calculator (which I now carry). Also check out the pennies/gram for Ketchup & HP sauce. The large family sizes are always more expensive per gram than the standard medium sized bottle. I guess that we automatically think that the larger size will be better value......WRONG. Check this on all your larger size purchases0
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:beer:Carling used to advertise the fact that its larger was 4.1%
it doesnt any more and it isnt (4%)0 -
Cans of beans and tomatoes are going down in size too. A can of one of these things is 420 grams. I've been checking cans I have bought recently. Some are 410 grams. Some are 400 grams. I cottoned on when I bought my canned kidney beans in a packet the other day and thought "No wonder they are swopping over to packets - nowt to do with the environment - its because they thought they would get away with cutting the quantity to 390grams in my cans worth and we wouldnt notice."
Very often the vegetarian recipes I use specify "1 can of tomatoes" or "1 can of kidney beans" or whatever - and we all know they mean 420 grams. Having 390 grams where one has bought 420 grams IYSWIM will skew the recipe proportions.
I can get round the reduced size cans of beans by making mine from dried ones in future - but what does one do about having a reduced amount of canned tomatoes in the recipe to what is due?
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Re the point by Methusaleh earlier about this practice helping to hide the increase in the cost of living - I shall be checking the next cost of living index that comes out to see how much of it is based on containers of a certain volume of food.:cool: I suspect he's right and that this is making it look like food hasnt increased in price as much as it actually has from the POV of the cost of living index. From this - I think the Government might actually be conniving in this practice for their own reasons - so I dont think we can expect them to take any action to stop this practice.:(
Personally - I'd much rather get the size of item I am expecting - even if it means that it looks like its costing me more (as it will be just costing me more in one way or another anyway). It makes life easier for me to get the standard size of something that I am expecting - and I want myself/other people to instantly be able to see clearly how much the items in the shops are rising in price.0 -
I work in a well known convenience store, Mars Bars have been reported as getting smaller by a few customers!0
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Somebody reported on these forums not long back that Copella apple juice has shrunk.
Copella Apple & Elderflower Juice @ Sainsburys, the 'New & Improved' 750ml bottle replaced the 1 litre bottle and the price dropped by just 2p.
This is effectively a price increase of 31%. Can anyone tell me what was wrong with the 1 litre bottle?0 -
I didn't buy Cardini's caesar salad dressing for a few months. When I did I found it had shrunk from 250ml to 150ml - for the same price. That is a more than 50% increase.0
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I noticed 12 months ago that Old El Paso spice mix for Fajitas and Tacos had reduced in size from 35grams to 30grams yet the price has increased.
I decided to do some online shopping last week ( Tesco ) and was surprised to see the product advertised as 35 grames so bought 10 packs.
Well as expected when they arrived they were 30g packs.
I complained to Tesco claiming they were misselling the product and guess what .... Got a full refund for the 10 packs and got to keep them.
I have just noticed today that they are still advertising the product as 35 grames.
Off to do some more online shopping now.0 -
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]At first sight, it might just look like a sneaky retailing practice - reducing quantities while keeping the price the same. But there is a very worrying problem underlying this. What effect will it all have on pensioners, whose annual pension increases are calculated on the basis of rises in the “cost of living”.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]If retailers keep reducing sizes, while keeping their prices the same, there will be no apparent rise in the cost of living. By that I mean that if you take a typical shopping basket and put into it a tube of Pringles, a packet of Bernard Matthews Turkey Ham, etc, etc...... the price of the basket will be the same today as it was this time last year. That doesn't really mean a “zero increase” in the cost of living, because you now get much less of all the products than you did last year.[/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman, serif]But the pensioners' annual increase will be zero, based on the mistaken notion that the “cost of living” hasn't gone up.
At the very least, increases in costs will be “hidden” or appear reduced as a result of this practice. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Maybe this is why pensions this year went up by 2.5% (less, on most pensions), while Bernard Matthews Turkey Ham went from 200g to 170g for the same £1.49 at Tesco – which represents a hidden increase of 17.6%. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Perhaps its all part of [/FONT][STRIKE]Robin Hood's [/STRIKE][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Alastair Darling's plan to aid economic recovery in the UK – take from the poor and give to the Turkey farmers![/FONT]0 -
I don't mind Mars Bars getting smaller as I can now eat a whole packet. In the olden days I had to stop after the fourth one. Now all five can be eaten and there is no waste.0
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I noticed a while ago that both Tesco and Sainsbury had reduced the size of their bags of low fat/healthy eating oven chips from 1.81kg to 1kg but kept the same price. When I e-mailed Tesco for an explanation I didn't get a reply. Luckily Asda didn't haven't followed that trend.0
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