Weigh what you're paying for

It's happening, and you have company: the people behind this page noticed it in sauces, granola bars, crisps, detergent, toilet roll, ice cream, yogurt, cake mix, chicken and chocolate, and two separate conversations include people who price goods for a living confirming that packs are cut or watered down while the price holds or rises. Here is how it's done, so you can see it coming. Across four separate conversations, the tell is the redesign: 'new look', 'new design', 'improved' on the front usually arrives with a smaller number on the back. Single accounts describe the specific tricks — a deeper dimple pressed into the bottom of a jar, a narrower roll of paper the same height, a box the same size with fewer items inside, a bottle that reads 'bigger' because the plastic grew and the contents didn't, a detergent that changed what a 'load' means rather than the size of the bottle, and one that shrinks the pack quietly, then later adds a little back and announces 'now with more' beside a price rise. Three conversations, and two more, describe the version you can't see on a label: the same weight with more water, more sugar or cheaper oil — a sauce that's thinner, an ice cream whipped with air to hold its volume, a chicken that's been plumped. Two things this page will not do, because the people here couldn't settle them. It won't tell you the cause: three separate arguments run greed against rising costs and none ends, and this page leaves it where they left it. And it won't tell you every change is a cut — one insider account describes a sauce jar that changed shape and size because production moved from one country to another, not to short you, and a correction here notes that comparing a pack from one chain with a pack from another produces phantom shrinkage, and an unresolved exchange suspects a metric label read against an imperial one does too. So the rule is: don't rely on memory, and don't accuse the shelf. Measure, which is the next question.

Two instruments, both free. First, the unit price. Across three separate conversations, and three more, the number to read is the price per ounce, per pound, per litre or per hundred grams — the small line on the shelf label, or the maths you do on the back of the pack — because that's the number a shrink can't hide behind. The pack price is what they want you to see; the unit price is what you're paying. Three conversations add the surprise: the bigger pack is not always cheaper per unit, and a 'family' size can beat a 'mega' size, so read the small line on both before you reach. Second, the scale. Four separate conversations weigh what they buy — on the store's own produce scale, which one account notes is checked and certified, or a kitchen scale at home — and compare the number to the net weight printed on the pack; two accounts say the reading came up short. Some care is needed here, and the people here supply it: under US labelling law the printed weight is the net contents, not the packaging — the people here weren't sure of that, so weigh with the tray off; frozen goods lose and gain moisture, so a few grams either way means nothing; and fluid ounces are volume, not weight, though for the same liquid a lighter bottle does mean less product. Two cautions add the legal grain, and the standard US inspectors use agrees: packs are allowed to vary a little, and the rule is that the average across a batch must meet the label and no single pack may fall short by more than a set limit — so one light pack is a tolerance and a pattern across several is a violation. When you find a pattern, the people here say tell someone, and they correct each other on who. It is not, one correction says, the food-and-drug agency; in the United States it's your state's weights and measures office, usually inside the state department of agriculture, which checks scales and package weights; for meat and poultry it's the federal meat inspection service. One account contacts the maker directly with a photo of the scale and the label and reports coupons or a refund in return; one caution says a report to a regulator brings an investigation, not quick money. And one more thing the label must tell you, on chicken: if water was retained in processing, US rules require the pack to say how much — 'up to so many percent retained water' — so read that line, and buy the bird that says less.

The recipe is the shrink you feel first. Three separate conversations and two more describe the same failure: a recipe written around 'one can' or 'one box' or 'one jar' goes wrong when the can holds less than it did, and a correction here gives a worked example — cake mixes went from 18.25 ounces to 15.25, about a sixth less, and the old recipes built on the old box came out flat. The fix is to write recipes in weights and volumes, not packages, and when an old recipe says 'one can', check what a can held when it was written. Now what to change, and this is where the people here divide, so the fork at the bottom of the page carries both sides. The first option is to make it yourself: six single accounts, across sauce, yogurt and patties, say the homemade version is cheaper, better and immune to shrinking, and one grows a few vegetables whose shop price stopped making sense. Three objections and one account push back hard, and this page carries them: cooking from scratch takes time, tools and energy that a single parent does not have, and a page that says 'just make it' isn't talking to them. Both are true. The second option is to change what you buy: switch to the brand that hasn't shrunk yet, buy the raw ingredient rather than the processed one — one account notes that breaded chicken is paying meat prices for breadcrumbs — or, one account says, buy from a bulk retailer whose return policy means a short pack goes back. Three conversations answer that switching often changes nothing because the competitor is doing the same. The third option is to notice and say so, which the previous question covers. And one small honesty about 'offers': one account describes the multi-buy deal that quietly ends or quietly changes as a price rise with the price unchanged. Read the shelf, not the sign.