Fuck pointless consumption!

I think this may be a bad example. Different fruits are not necessarily sold in the same weights. Fresh strawberries are typically sold in heavier containers than a container of raspberries, and have been for a long time. Raspberries are just a more expensive fruit.

Uh... those are two different fruits. If you are going to compare packing to measure shrinkflation, shouldn't you be using the same product?

I’d say “That’s Loblaw’s for you” but the other day I was in Costco, and even THEIR packages have shrunk. You still have to buy a pack of 6, but it doesn’t weigh as much.

Oddly though, a 1kg bag of oats is still a 1kg bag of oats… just more expensive.

Same, I usually compare the net weight and amount of servings in a package vs the other brands nowadays.

There are definitely brands I stopped buying due to shrinkflation. A few times I've seen shrinkflated items on sale later and then do the math just to realize the price is still too stupid to buy even at sale price.

My favorite shrinkflation is Campbell's soup, particularly their low-sodium offerings. Costs twice as much, comes in a slightly smaller can, and isn't condensed. So you pay five times as much for them to just not put so much fucking salt into their soup in the first place.

Are you comparing the two package sizes? One has strawberries and one has raspberry’s….

That is like… well comparing strawberries to raspberries they are totally different… I would assume packaging and pricing would be different.

Thats like when we see headlines like "gen z are destroying the alcohol industry"

Yet another reason not to buy that unhealthy trash.

ButButBut it's part of this complete breakfast!

Gestures broadly at the huge array of breakfast items on the table of which the cereal is a minor component

I only buy specific cereal, and only when it is on sale, because my wife and daughter have celiacs disease and their options for "easy" food are fairly limited. Cheerios and Chex are essentially all I buy and only when they on a significant sale.

almost ever chain i go to, nobody visits the cereal aisle ever, they know its just pure sugar in a box. they opted for the "healthier" foods. the only people that buy cereal, are people with children or is addicted to the even more sugary granola cereal.

Keep in mind that most off-brand products are literally the same brand name product in a different container.

In Canada we have a few off brand labels like No Name and Compliments. Take ketchup for example. The off-brand ketchup is literally the same brand name Heinz or French's it's sitting beside, but for $1.50 cheaper. That's because the off brand companies like Wal Mart and Loblaws pay for production cycle time at the main plants. So a run of Heinz ketchup will actually be a run of No Name ketchup. Heinz gets more money for the use of production time than they would selling that line of their own brand ketchup.

If you're brand loyal to something, you're just willing to pay more for a name, not the thing you want. Sour cream, mayo, toothpaste, even soap is all the exact same as the brand name stuff you're buying.

Most of the time you can tell where it came from by the production stamp. All companies have their own number so the no name ketchup would have the same product number stamp as the brand name one because it came from the same facility.

I have loyalty to higher prices if they treat their employees right. I'm willing to shell out an extra dollar if it means the employees aren't getting paid shit an hour

My only loyalty is to brands that have higher quality than the competitors. And that only last as long as they are maintaining their quality or another brand is increasing their quality.

What about Uncle Sam cereal? It's gone now, bought by a big cereal company and nearly immediately shut down, but there was nothing as fibrous and un-sugared on the American cereal market as that. Oh, sigh, Uncle Sam.

I mean, I wouldn't care what brand it was if there were anything comparable. But given that it was the only one like it, I was extremely loyal.

Pretty mind blowing to think maybe people don't need 200 variations of the same sugary grains.

In foods especially, they have substituted corn syrup for sugar, steroid+antibiotic pumped milk and meat for "real" meat (typical market chicken is a travesty these past years), GMO crops sprayed with extreme weed killers and pesticides for simple sun and water grown food. They like to say our food bills are going down in real dollars, but they're not, not if you buy organic GMO free - which is what most food used to be not so long ago.

In the 70s it felt like brands actually meant something. Since the 90s, they haven't. Brands have milked their loyal followers for every last penny of profit while cheapening their products as much as they possibly can. Brands have become an anti-pattern for me, if a particular brand is "commanding a premium" that's a sign to me to A) dig DEEP on pre-purchase quality information and if that's hard to come by (which it usually is) B) walk away from the recognized brand name - assume it to be of inferior quality to go with its higher price.

I shopped in the same grocery store chain my grandparents and parents shopped in my whole life since the 1960s until about 8-10 years ago. At that point they started milking their brand loyalists and literally jacked our monthly food bill 2x, +100%, and that's not industry wide inflation, that's how much they inflated relative to the competition. We went from spending 90% of our food, soaps, pharmacy/drug store purchases there down to less than 5% in the first year after we quit them, and since then they now get less than 1% of our budget, only catching our purchases when they're the only store open or other cases of extreme convenience purchasing. During the pandemic, we had instantcart deliver groceries from a competitor and a $120 delivered order, including $10 tip and delivery fees, were still far less expensive than the same products from the "leading" chain.

Don't the same brands also make the store (private label) brands?

404 media has an interesting podcast episode on “AEO” (AI SEO) and how it can be manipulated. Apple link

Having cereal for breakfast daily is akin to using soda for hydration.

Well, I was born in the 1960s and honey coated chocolate sugar bombs were already the cereal of choice among my kindergarten classmantes - and soda for hydration was pretty standard then too.

So true, and worse, most cereal is just carbs to begin with!

Basically your breakfast is sugar on sugars.

That's actually great news. Sugar is a hell of a drug and quitting soda is a big step in less sugar consumption. I enjoy water and hot tea usually at work, but my co-workers love soda. One of them got a kidney stone and the doctor told her it's because you were drinking 5 cans of soda a day.

I think the other bad part is even the no name brands have ramped up prices as well... for a bit it was pretty good, but I feel like a lot of them just ended up pricing themselves the same as they did before, which is like .50 cents less or maybe a $1 less than the main brand. At that point i say its not even worth it and either decide on just buying the name brand cause the savings is dumb or just not buy it again until they lower the price or it goes on a good sale.

I don't want to create a run on the fresh mint sections of the groceries, but you might try buying a package of mint (generally about $1.65 around here) rinsing it off and putting it (the mint, not the package) in a pitcher of water in the fridge. Zero sugar, fresh flavor, and I generally can refill a 1/2 gallon pitcher of water 6-10 times per package of mint. Toward "end of life" the mint will start to oxidize and make mint tea instead of mint water - slightly different but still nice IMO flavor, the brown coloring doesn't mean it's bad (unless it gets CocaCola dark, mine never has gone that far...)

Time to try a Victory Garden... good luck!

"We're losing money. People aren't buying our products anymore! What should we do?"

Shrink the size of the product and increase the cost. That will clearly be the solution!

If only we got rid of the entire government and form an Ancapistan paradise here in America, then companies will lower their prices as the invisible hand just happens to do its thing. /j

Shrinkflators can go F themselves. That shrunken package with the same, or often higher, price is a major incentive for me to buy their competitors' products instead.

So many categories. It all tastes average, is tiny and expensive. Cooking and eating with simpler ingredients and less processed stuff is actually quite freeing in a weird way.

Yeah I buy cereal about as often as I buy ice cream. Too often

We shop at Aldi a lot, but we also have Trader Joes and I fairly consistently prefer the Trader Joes' products to the Aldi alternatives - Aldi seems to be aiming for the absolute lowest possible cost of delivery, and when that means rotting fruit in the produce section becasue they're understaffed / undermanaged... combined with high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar in most of the processed products, lines 12 customers deep at the one open checkout, etc. it gets to be a turn-off.

It is impossible to make a good decision. There are so many brands, and information that is important is so difficult to find. I'll happily pay more for brands that focus on sustainability, avoid slave-labour-like practices, support communities, don't fund genocide, etc. But it is exhausting trying to keep up. I see it on Lemmy all the time.....a digital product I use or pay for because the last information I had was that they're good; but then there's an uproar that it was bought out or the founder supports some appalling ideology or something. Can't fucking keep up.

Depends. Sometimes its better to pay more for a better quality brand because it'll last longer - therefore costing less in the long run. Shoes/boots are a good example of this. Obviously if its more expensive that doesn't mean it'll be automatically be better though.

Because of ingredients? I check ingredients first, origin second and price third.

I dont want major brands, but I am not buying generic crap either.

I am never going to eat something simply because its "the cheapest".

That's the real problem here. You can only go cheaper brands once.

There's other ways to tighten the belt - cheaper cuts of meat, more meatless meals, fewer veggies that tend to be a little pricey for the calories (nevermind great for nutrients) and more rice-and-beans that are cheaper calories.

There's plenty of room for a downward spiral… but what about those already lower down on that spiral who already had to make those choices? They definitely will reach food insecurity quicker.

I am loyal to certain cheese producers, from local small scale producers to national artisan producers that ship to me, to national larger scale cheese makers who have specific products I like. I'll buy certain imported cheeses with place protections, like Italian DOP cheeses.

With chicken, I like a particular producer, because the chicken just tastes better to me when it's air chilled and of a specific size (4 lbs/1.8 kg is the ideal size).

For flour, I use a combination of a local mill for whole wheat, and a reputable national producer for bread flour and all purpose white flour. I have a specific brand for 00 pizza flour. I know what to expect from those products, and that allows me to be precise.

For pasta, I have several brands and shapes to choose from, and can obviously do fine with whatever box, but I still have my preferences for specific shapes and brands and bronze-die lines. Some of them are imported and some are domestic.

Condiments and sauces? Yeah, I have a preferred ketchup brand, 3 specific soy sauces for different applications, 3 specific mustard brands for different applications, and a preferred mayonnaise. I keep about 5-10 hot sauces on hand, each for a different style of food.

As you mention, for wine and beer and liquor and liqueurs, I am fairly picky when it comes to brands and quality. Life is too short to drink bad alcohol.

But it also pretty much extends to non alcoholic beverages, too. I choose my coffee and go for specific roasts by specific roasters. I like a particular brand of soda. I even have a preferred brand of orange juice.

For chips and snacks, I very much prefer specific flavors of specific brands, including even the biggest of the industrialized brands for certain products.

With chocolate? Yeah, brand matters to me a lot. Most other candy, too.

I have a preferred butter brand. I can make do with others, but I prefer mine. There are only two bacon brands I like. I have a hot dog brand preference, too.

I'm pretty serious about food, and I love blind tasting things and forming preferences around new foods, revisiting old taste tests, etc. I couldn't imagine not caring about the details on food, and that often means knowing the difference between brands (and knowing when a brand has changed its formula/recipe).

People out there are doing good work, making delicious food. Sometimes they put their name on it, and that means something.

Jan 2028 PlayStation is going to stop physical games. So you don’t have to wait too long.

Clue: products' retail prices have almost NOTHING to do with what they cost to produce and deliver and sell to you. It's almost entirely about what people are willing to pay.

A lot of people are willing to pay more for a product they perceive as more expensive to produce, but that perception is often far from the truth.

I drink Waterloo. Just water and a little natural flavoring. No sugar, salt, or calories, and it's much cheaper than Spindrift. I love the Peach best.

Some searching suggests Spindrift is from 3-12% actual fruit juice. So let's say 1 oz of juice in a 12 oz can. Simply Orange is a brand of premium orange juice. It costs about 10 cents per ounce. And that's a premium product sold in its own packaging. In reality, you're talking less than a nickle of juice in each can.