Democratic lawmakers accuse companies of shrinking product sizes while charging consumers the same price
It’s becoming a common experience for Americans going to the grocery store: your bag of chips seems lighter, your favorite drink comes in a slimmer bottle, and you’re running out of laundry detergent more quickly than usual. And yet things are staying the same price.
On Monday two Democratic lawmakers launched an attempt to get to the bottom of the phenomena, accusing three major companies, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills, of shrinking the size of products while charging consumers the same price – a price-gouging practice known as “shrinkflation”.
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“Shrinking the size of a product in order to gouge consumers on the price per ounce is not innovation, it’s exploitation,” Warren and Dean said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this price gouging is a widespread problem, with corporate profits driving over half of inflation.”
What we need is regulation on serving sizes. Restaurants offer giant soda sizes because the cost of the actual product was almost nothing in comparison to the infrastructure required to serve it. Selling a $2 soda is roughly the same profit at 8 oz or 32 oz. So why not offer the 32 oz for 15 cents more and make the customer feel better about the value for their money? Plus, it’s addictive and reinforces taste hunger which encourages binge eating and triggers a physiological response to the meal.
Unfettered capitalism would scoop out your insides and sell them back to you if it generated profit. Sugar, salt, acid, and fat should be tightly regulated additives.
That’s really funny, I just finished posting almost the same thing about serving sizes to someone else in this comment chain but put it in another way. I agree with you 100%.