<p>And tuna cans barely make one sandwich these days. We used to get 3 or 4 out of one can.</p>
<p>I hate the canned tomato thing, lots of my recipes call for large or small cans of tomatoes. The one thing that ought to shrink back to its original size but hasn’t is soda. Remember the size of the bottle it used to come in? 6.5 oz.</p>
<p>It has been a major challenge of my math skills to calculate the per pound price of a 12 oz bag of coffee. Or… what is 1/3 of $7.99?</p>
<p>My wife just showed me the old 1 pound box of spaghetti and the new box which is exactly the same size, and it was actually very hard to find the place where it was marked… 12 oz. That is truly infuriating!</p>
<p>One of the benefits of growing up in an EU country… standardized food packaging, labeling, and so on. At least back then…</p>
<p>We just noticed this last week with Kashi 7 grain puffs. They cut several ounces from the contents, kept the height of the box the same (and the price) but made it thinner. It looks like a book sitting on the shelf. And to add insult they wrote “New Look!” on the front of the box.</p>
<p>momsquad, I know what you mean. I buy the Kashi Go Lean crunch cereal. DH and I both eat it every morning…not supersize servings either. I end up buying four boxes a week to make sure it lasts a week. BTW, in all my grocery shopping I have found the cheapest place to buy Kashi cereal is Target.</p>
<p>When I wasn’t paying attention, the bars of Ivory soap shrank by about 1/3. In an effort to find soap that wouldn’t wear down to a nun quite so fast, I bought a different brand that is packaged in boxes. Well crack open the box, and the bar is no larger than the puny bar of Ivory. I should have trusted the weight label of the package.</p>
<p>I’m glad i’m not the only one who has picked up on this. My tissue boxes feel like they are tiny. And I don’t drink much soda but i did see the 20 packs of pepsi and coke lately - when did that happen? And cereal definitely has shrank. I didn’t notice detergent but i usually buy small bottles to begin with.</p>
<p>I just sent off some nasty emails to Barilla because I made the mistake of assuming that all their pastas were in 16oz boxes - it turns out that the premium pastas (meant to be substituted 1-for-1 with the regular pastas) are 12-13.25oz boxes. Which means that all those “1 box of pasta” recipes are messed up with the new stuff.</p>
<p>People buy coffee in cans?
I still measure it and grind it by the lb.</p>
<p>I also buy ice cream by the pint, but that seems to weigh more than the kind that comes in a qt.</p>
<p>Hmm I haven’t noticed this but now I know to keep on the lookout!</p>
<p>Oh, and I though it was me getting bigger :)</p>
<p>I’ve noticed this with almost everything we buy. It drives me crazy. I do have 2 less people at home this school year, but that doesn’t mean I want my packages smaller and prices the same.</p>
<p>Groceries are “shrinking”, yet packaging in most cases uses the same amount of materials (manufacturers think that we are stupid?!). What a waste!</p>
<p>I sometimes buy these frozen packaged veal patties that my husband likes to take for a quickie lunch - he’ll throw some leftover marinara and mozzerella cheese on top. Hadn’t bought them in a while and picked up a package last week. Still 4 in a package but the packaging AND the actual patties are at least 1/3 smaller than they used to be.</p>
<p>A pound of bacon hasn’t been a pound of bacon in a long time either. A package is now only 12 ounces but looks the same as it ever did.</p>
<p>The shrinking sizes are a big problem when using old recipes. :(</p>
<p>It’s not that the companies assume consumers are dumb and won’t know the difference. It’s that they know consumers are dumb and will scream their lungs out if that box of cereal costs more than it did a month ago. Even if the increase is purely passing along the increase in material costs on the other end.</p>
<p>As I remember, Consumer Reports started referring to the “grocery shrink ray” a few decades ago. You see it often on their subsidiary’s website, consumerist.com, which often notes shrunken packaging.</p>