The Great 'shrinking food and other items' Hunt

Smidster

The Farmfoods "3 for £2" vegetables are down to 750g from around 900g - 1kg

Can be spotted by slight packaging change.

rofr50

I was wandering down the cereals aisle the other day to pick up my sugar free Alpen and was pleasantly surprised to find that they had gone DOWN in price, from £4.29 where they had been for some months, to £3.99. I thought - well done.

Hang on though I thought, this bag fits easier in the hand. So I wondered, "what does it weigh?" Ah, the bag is now 1.1kgs and I got home and found my old bag. The old one weighed 1.3kgs !!!

Instead of a nice reduction, when comparing on a unit weight basis the Alpen had gone up by 10%. Now is that sneaky or what?

For the same product you also need to be aware that 2 boxes no longer equal one bag.

Smidster

rofr50 wrote: »

I was wandering down the cereals aisle the other day to pick up my sugar free Alpen and was pleasantly surprised to find that they had gone DOWN in price, from £4.29 where they had been for some months, to £3.99. I thought - well done.

Hang on though I thought, this bag fits easier in the hand. So I wondered, "what does it weigh?" Ah, the bag is now 1.1kgs and I got home and found my old bag. The old one weighed 1.3kgs !!!

Instead of a nice reduction, when comparing on a unit weight basis the Alpen had gone up by 10%. Now is that sneaky or what?

For the same product you also need to be aware that 2 boxes no longer equal one bag.

The "Standard" Alpen (Red Bags) has also been reduced to 1.3kg from 1.5kg. I guess it is only a matter of time before this follows the low sugar version. Fortunately the Aldi / Lidl versions are far nicer

Cereals in general are a real minefield - More and more in quantities like 375g or 800g.

Nada666

Smidster wrote: »

The Farmfoods "3 for £2" vegetables are down to 750g from around 900g - 1kg

Can be spotted by slight packaging change.

And several are no longer in the multi-buy. (Corn, some peas.)

maman

I don't know if this is new but I noticed yesterday that Sensodyne toothpaste is in 75ml tubes not the 100ml that I'm used to with Colgate etc.


DH uses Sensodyne as his dentist told him to?? It's always far more expensive than anything else. Yesterday was 2 for 6 in Boots, 2 for £5 in Superdrug. Then I noticed that 2 x pump action at 100ml each was much better value than 2 x tubes at 75ml.


Hope it doesn't catch on.

[Deleted User]

I've just noticed several large loaves in Tesco that are 750g. I hadn't even realised that they weren't supposed to be 800g by statute anymore until I checked. Apparently that piece of legislation went by the board in 2008 after about 750 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3081008/Bread-rules-abandoned-after-750-years.html

thor

With all the downsizing going on, I switched to yorkies to get my chocolate fix. There were only 3 in a pack but each bar did come in at 55g and were quiet a decent deal when discounted to a quid.
I have just spotted them at that price in Sainsburys but they looked smaller and to my dismay I read that they are now about 10g lighter. I'm old enough to remember when Nestle used to advertise Yorkie as being 'mansized' when they were first brought out in the 70s weighing 70g - almost the same as a 3 pack of flakes these days! Maybe I am wrong and they are not being greedy but are simply moving into to the politically correct modern age where girls can enjoy them or perhaps they want us to reduce our calorie intake in a bid to solve the obesity crisis.
Oh well that is another choco to cross off my list:(

JohnRo

It's becoming a constant ongoing process, every few months a shrinkage occurs, it seems it's hardly worth documenting but would be very interesting to have all the data collated.

maman

thor wrote: »

With all the downsizing going on, I switched to yorkies to get my chocolate fix. There were only 3 in a pack but each bar did come in at 55g and were quiet a decent deal when discounted to a quid.
I have just spotted them at that price in Sainsburys but they looked smaller and to my dismay I read that they are now about 10g lighter.

Strangely, a similar thing happened to me today:


DH and I like to share a Crunchie with our coffee at the football. Needed to buy in enough to last the rest of the season (unless we get a good cup run;)). Bars have now shrunk to 32g from 40g! No idea what's happened to price as I haven't needed to buy any for months but I'm guessing that's not dropped 20%:mad:.

Steve059

It appears that ASDA SmartPrice whole chickens are now an average of just 1.3kg. They were as heavy as 1.7kg.

Update: Tesco don't seem to have copied this trick ... yet. I found one of their Everyday Value chickens for £2.48/kg (the same as ASDA) at a whopping 1.968kg.