Food Theory: They're STEALING Your Food! 

I work in different grocery stores all around the Triangle in NC and I'm seeing this a lot. Packaging is shrinking and the price is still raising on them at the same time. Check out Breton Crackers as one example, they shrunk 20% and raised by 1$. They hide the price raise by putting them on sale right after, then after the sale you are left with the higher price and smaller packaging.

In Germany, the consumer protection agency gives out a yearly award for the "Mogelpackung", which is a figurative word for a sham, but literally translates as deceptive packaging. Here, the worst offenders of shrinking packages and most air in packages are publically shamed.

"Sizes never really go back up." Actually, they do go back up. When they say, "Now 20% more!" on the packaging, they mean both the amount of food AND the price. So they shrink, shrink, shrink until enough people complain and then they increase both the size and the price at the same time and simultaneously spin in it in a way that most people won't notice.

Seeing the words “Share Size” also makes me laugh. Every instance of shrinkflation gives me another reason to completely abandon a product I shouldn’t be eating anyway.

Just like your theory on why company logos are getting more and more simplified and worse, looks like their products are doing so as well.

In Brazil there's a law that makes it mandatory for the companies to clearly state in the package that the product is smaller/lighter when they do it.

I went through a number of years where I was extremely tight on cash. Part of how I managed my money was tracking cost to weight of all the food and drink I bought. Because this went on for years, I do this by default now, and shrinkflation has VASTLY escalated recently. This is a very timely video, thank you for it.

The issue isn't that they're trying to make up costs. These companies are shrinking products, increasing cost and cheaping out on ingredients all despite posting record profits.

Food products aren't only getting smaller, they're also getting less nutritious and less healthy due to using lower-quality ingredients to save production costs

This is something that has been going on for decades. I remember hearing about it when I was a kid. They do go back up though. They eventually release a "new bigger size" product that is the same size as it used to be or a little bigger, but costs more. Ever wonder why there are several sizes of cereal boxes? That is why

Finally we're tackling the topic of SHRINKFLATION! An especially bad problem in the wake of Covid. Thanks for covering this, Theory crew!

Was so happy you started with calling it stealing. These vendors are making enemies out of the general public. It should be easy enough to figure out who they are and make them pay.

9:21 the only thing wrong about this is that products eventually do go back to "Normal size" but they are advertised as "Mega size", the small product we know gets discontinued and companies then use shrinkflation on the "mega size" product until it becomes small then repeat the process.

I've been taught about calculating price per ounce since I was little, and been shown and told about the shrinkflation as well. The watering down thing is one I didn't know though.

its almost like there should be some "rules" or something to stop these murky practices instead of relying on the customers to somehow gain enough traction to publicly shame these companies... like "consumer protection laws" or something...

Cereal is one of the most noticeable of this. I've worked in 4 grocery stores in the last 10 years, and when you work around it you notice it all the time.

As a child of the 70's (Yes I'm Old AF), I started to notice "Shrinkflation" in the 90's. Some people even tried telling me "You just got bigger" So thanks Mat Pat, this topic needs more exposure.

"Shrinkflation" was evident to me during my first job in a corner convenience store. Seeing packages drop from 18oz to 12oz with the big text "Now 20% Bigger! *than our 10oz box" was almost a monthly routine. Candy was the most common thing I saw pull this off. Boxes would be the same size, the fill or content would be reduced, and the text always had some legal loophole to say things were bigger and better. Advertising needs extremely strict control that just doesn't exist (USA experience)

Years ago, there were mandatory packaging sizes in Germany. That helped avoid that but now you get lots of crooked package sizes. Milka went from 100g to some new bars 90g or 87 g etc

What annoys me is when the chocolate bars get smaller and they say it's because it's better for you or only so many calories per bar. It's got nothing to do with less calories but they try to make us think that. They still made Toblerone smaller. It use to be 400g now it's less.

I gotta say, while Food Theory seemed like an odd concept at first, it might legitimately have become my favourite of the three! While there might be some movies/ games I'm not really interested in, food is just such an all-encompassing feature of our lives that practically every theory has been interesting, at least, not to mention real-life applicable or pure educational. Thanks for popping out a banger after a banger, Theorist Family

When my sister and I were younger, my dad actually taught us about checking the price per unit, now I am saving lot of money because of that; so I’m glad to see that you guys are covering it as well.

I recall a lecture during my first year of college where my professor was talking about shrinkflation in regards to coffee containers about how they introduced the 'handle' indentation in the plastic and how consumers didn't make any complaints about how they were getting less coffee instead they praised the company for adding the handle

Doritos has been playing this game before I started eating them as a teenager back in the 1980's. Not only do they shrink the sizes, they get customers used to it, and then they introduce larger grab bags at a higher price, and then slowly reduce the size over time. There are other strategies like reducing the seasoning on each chip. Notice new flavors are bursting with flavor but over time slowly become more tame in flavor, and that is because they reduce the seasoning. Also, they will change the packaging sizes, introducing more air in the larger bag, but package the same amount of chips, or slightly more chips, but at a price increase. There are other strategies, but those are the few I can think of off the top of my head.

I have a spread sheet with toilet paper costs that I started in college. It calculates TP cost for 100 sheets and then combines that with the Ply count. It was always interesting to see where the best value was. (It was usually angel soft)

When I was a teenager, I remember they had these Giant Snickers. They were actually huge, not like the "king size" we have today. The chocolate was three times as thick, so it took a good cracking to get through. They were the BEST! I've missed them ever since. Never seen them anywhere. Not even in America. Some things were better in the 90s.

Literally yesterday I was thinking, hey this Big Mac looks way smaller. I don't go to Macdonalds often so if they did change it gradually I feel like I'd notice.

Sizes are going down but prices are not staying the same. Pasta in SW Ontario, Canada last year was 900g for $1.75 and now it's 750g for $2.25. The same goes with Doritos the weight has stayed the same but the price is up nearly $1.25 per big bag and when they go on sale they're usually around $3.25 where they used to go on sale for $2 last year for the bigger bag.

There's a really nasty practice I've noticed with cookie packaging, where they first made an indent to the interior plastic packaging, so that there are less cookies in a pile, but the plastic is heavier, so it actually feels like, ou have more than before..

I love how Theorist team is being the town crier for things that I gripe about to myself at the groceries, hah I guess it's up to us, the consumer to be vocal & act by our dollar spending. Thanks BJ Novak for the call out, & also for the Office

Yeah it sucks that this is a thing we have to deal with. The small and subtle changes in store shelves are the worst! One of my favorite examples is from the company Bolthouse. They used to sell 14oz bottles of dressing but they subtly shifted them down to 12oz.

I work in a grocery store getting peoples groceries when they do curbside pickup, and this becomes super obvious when you do that. Sometimes I will have what is supposedly the item the customer wants right in front of me, but it won’t scan into our system, so I have to put it as a substitution, and what shows is two items with the exact same name but one has a smaller weight/volume. The one thing I will say is don’t get mad at grocery store employees for this, we have literally no control over that and if we shop at our own store it affects us too.

"Someone is stealing from you" Me, looking at the several other Food Theory episodes that have taught me as much - "I'm aware. But I'll happily listen to you explain again."

Ive been a meat cutter for almost 7 years now. Something thats always bothered me is head office telling saying we need to put less and less ground beef in the family packs.

Yesterday in my college stats my professor gave us m&ms so we could count the colors and do some distribution stuff with it. He said he had been doing It for years and the amount you get has slowly going down.

Dove Hand soap literally JUST did this in the past month. I realized by reading the label that they put less hand soap in the bottle, and it even seems to be diluted. They also changed the look of their bottle.

Our family always gets suspicious and disappointed when a food product has "NEW LOOK! SAME GREAT TASTE!". We go "oh great, how are they ripping us off this time"

Teabags with less tea in them are also a thing. It's just everywhere and they always have some BS excuse. I always look at the price per kilo for this reason. I had no idea about products being watered down though! That's a new one to look out for.

The worst thing is when you're making recipes that call for a can of this or a box of that, but when those sizes change and you don't realize it, it throws the entire thing off. Personally, I'd rather pay the little bit more and keep getting the same standardized sizes. But that's just me.

I first noticed this in the mid-90s as I bought 99 cents bag of doritos chips almost every day after school when I noticed the amount in the bags was decreasing. The bags went from 3.5 ounce the 3.2 to 3.0 to 2.8 to 2.5 to 2.2 to 2.0 to 1.8 ounces.

Shrinking products is such a rip-off: we end up buying more packaging per unit of food, adding more to the volume of garbage we have to dispose of. Thanks, food sellers!

Shrinkflation is insidious. "We cut back to keep your prices the same." However, there is still 8% inflation, so you're paying more for less.

I remember when they slowly introduced yogurt in smaller amounts, from 8oz to 6oz. During that transition, they introduced Greek style yogurts and some other fancy doodads. These newer versions of yogurt were being sold in the 6oz sizes. Most people didn't recognize these changes because they were too busy with the new types. Yoplait whips was one that gave you less as you paid the same for the same size container. Stir a Yoplait whip, you get about 1/3 to 1/2 the amount vs the original. Anyhow, it really took off in the 1970's when it was stated, 'If we took one olive out of every jar, would the people notice?' - "I miss that olive!"

You know I noticed this too, because I remember that there was a time that a bag of regular Lay's potato chips used to be full to the very top. Nowadays the bag of Lay's potato chips are half full, to where there's nothing but air at the top of an unopened bag of chips.

Shrinkflation is the longest running game of observation duty ever, trying to remember if the cereal box has always been that small and/or gaslighting yourself into believing it has

As someone who works in a store and stocks food every single day, I noticed how a lot more of our products looked different and didn't fit on the shelf correctly like before. Now I know why. Its unfortunate really.

I've noticed this with the Costco brand, Kirkland signature, and their waters, before the water bottle used to be filled to the brim but now it's a couple ounces less

The latest one I noticed was Welch's fruit snacks. I eat them all the time so I know how many are usually in a little bag. I looked at the nutrition info and the calories changed from 80 to 70 per serving and carbs changed from 19 to 17. They are also tasting weird 🤔.

I worked at a grocery store and I remember boxed pancake mix slowly going from 12 oz to 11.5 oz to 11 oz and the price stayed the same over months

I mean, I saw this happening over 5 years ago. I saw that my shampoo/conditioner was getting smaller per bottle, plus getting more expensive, so I went to Big Lots where they had the old bottle with more product in it still, and bought ALL of them. Took years to get through all that but it was worth it with the price of shampoo/conditioner now!

I noticed this the MOMENT they started doing this !!! Their " family sized " bag of chips is the same size that the " normal " ones used to be and the " normal " size is insanely smaller than they used to be. It's absolutely insane !!

I've noticed this for years. When I go to a restaurant today or order fast food, the portions get smaller and they tend to give you more lettuce or celery with your food.

As a note, Andy Rooney, the former editorialist on old TV's 60 Minutes, noticed this pattern of shrinking foods back in the 1980s.

Funnily enough, my family and I noticed this happening with boxed cakes from Betty Crocker of all things a few years ago before Covid. It put us off from buying them for a LONG time since it screwed with the volume in the cake pans we preferred using so the cake would have been as thick as a standard wafer bar when done, and if I’m recalling correctly they didn’t even bother to change the recommended pan sizes and types they would give you on the back of the box to help clarify which would be best based on what you want, which just ticked us off even more. Went to scratch cake baking more after that. Same with their brownies. You want the thick boys you have to use two boxes to make them feel like a proper brownie thickness.

I’ve noticed this with Pringles. The can size has not changed, but the chips are smaller, and they’re not filling it up as much as they use to.

I work stocking at a grocery store, and I have absolutely noticed shrinkflation happen, and I always call it out when I see it.

If mat tried to convince me I was actually a teleporting cat who escaped a government lab and my entire life was a hallucination caused by drinking too much caprisun, honestly I'd buy it.

As a packaging scientist, can confirm, this is a very real thing! Whether it’s the packaging material or product, a lot of companies do this for cutting cost and corners, but don’t adjust initial product prices most of the time with it, which stinks! Also, hope you are still planning on doing the left and right Twix facility episode, would love to see the packaging research on that topic!

I’ve seen shrinkflation firsthand at the movie theater I work at and it’s drove me INSANE. We get a new shipment of our candies and when we restock, sure enough, at least one of the boxes/bags is slightly smaller yet the prices slowly increase. It’s frustrating because I know there’s nothing I can do about it

I'm going to start calling out all of these companies. I'm sick of it.

Favorite example of this that I did notice over the years: Ghirardelli bitter sweet chocolate chips. Years back, a bag was 12oz and all of my recipes were based on that (two batches of my cookies). Every couple of years they would take off 0.5oz, until they now sit at 10oz. And you would notice the weight change each time!

Ohh I know, as a retail worker I've noticed many sizes have shrunk months ago, family size Kellogg's frosted flakes look like the normal size I would get just a year ago, and while normal sizes have shrunk a small but noticable amount Edit: this is just me looking at box size. Thought I was going crazy but never bothered to look, thanks Matt

An example: In Sweden we have a soda drink called Julmust and Påskmust (the are literally the same but re branded for Christmas and Easter) that is deeply rooted in tradition. The brand Apotekarnes has a monopoly on the market and they went from 1,5L to 1,4L bottles which is a very obvious change since it deviates from the standard size of all bottles.

Here in Brazil there's a law that obliges the manufacturers to put on their packaging for a certain ammount of time how much their reducing from it. Its usually on the weight, "Before x g, now y g" While that doesn't solve the problem, it usually makes the consumer aware that the products are getting smaller

As someone who works at a supermarket, I can confirm that the Bolthouse Farms salad dressing has shrunk from 14 oz. to 12 oz. Coworker had to change the tags because of the price per ounce increase.

I have always notice the shrinkflation, but this is the first time I have seen the ingredients also have been changed by adding water or less costly ingredients. Thanks for pointing out the calorie change per serving.

this is a huge deal and people should talk about it more. I always use this method while I'm buying in grocery stores. Unless I want a certain name brand, I pay attention to the euro per kg of that product. it is so useful! great work once again

now shrinkflation is paired with raising prices

Proud to say that when Toblerone made their bars smaller I quit as their social media manager. I then started the petition to get them to change the bars or label it better and eventually they did. ☺️

I was surprised recently when I was able to find an actual half-gallon of ice cream at Safeway, where most all manufacturers have switched to a 1.5 quarts. But there’s a gotcha: It’s Häagen-Dazs Vanilla. $14.99 per half gallon.

That's never been something I've been affected by. Instead of paying attention to the price per unit, I always look at the price per weight ratio. I started doing that to compare products of different size, but now it's become an ingrained habit. OR SO I THOUGHT! Now I gotta watch out for watered down products. Yeeesh.

Some stores have stopped listing price per ounce and label it per unit which tells you nothing.

I've noticed this ALL the time!! The 99 cent store is FAMOUS for it. I first noticed this with the TACO BELL burrito for $1 getting smaller and the owner 10 years ago agreed and gave me a $10 gift card as an apology. Now? Good luck. 2.19 and it's STILL Tiny!! Better yet, they SAY they're being healthier for you, I want a cheap meal with big burritoes!!! Do Taco Bell's Burritoes next!!!

I caught on to this practice years ago during the 2008 recession. A lot of the food I bought back then suddenly came in much smaller packages. Years later, when the economy was doing much better, the food remained smaller. Because why go back to normal when you can make that much more money instead?

This has been happening for years and it is about time people started talking about it. The other problem that some people don't think about is it is screwing up recipes - sometimes you need one package of cake mix for example, well that package is smaller now so the amounts are wrong for everything else now, but how much do you need to adjust. So in addition to the financial scam there is a secondary problem too. And it isn't just food - it is everything. I would rather they raise prices and keep the original sizes so I can make better decisions - it is very frustrating. Also I love that this posted today right as I am about to head over to the grocery store.

Shrinkflation has been applied to many items found at the grocery store. Also known as Greedflation!

The other problem we’re facing now is that the prices ARE going up as well. The exact same Costco shopping trip is higher this year than last year for the same items.

Several years ago, McDonalds did something like this. They changed their McDouble from two patties and two pieces of cheese to one piece of cheese and two patties. And then advertised they were meatier. Instead of less cheesy.

very informative food theory, it kinda sucks that not only chips have been suffering from shrinkflation, but even bars of soap and toilet paper are getting smaller. It’s just less value for your buck now

One of the things I actually like about shopping at Wal-Mart is that they actually list the price-per-ounce on the shelf. So they let you compare this sort of data between brands as well.

Ahh, the it hasn't gotten smaller, you've gotten taller play. I remember the first time McDonald's used that line with the Big Mac years back, well before the pandemic, and thinking what a bunch of hokey that was. Great job highlighting why one should always read the fine print and focus on the cost per unit. I've tried to preach this for years to everyone I know, and I'm glad that message is now reaching the masses through you. Because hey, shrinkflation isn't just a theory... it's a huge issue, and we all need to work to stop it.

I'm glad Matpat is recognizing the more serious stuff and trying to help us out

In my country there is no "per ounce" on supermarket price tags (and I often find myself pulling out the calculator on my phone to do the math). I was once in another country where such lebelling does exist, but once I noticed in the yogurt section, some price tags read "per unit", some "per 100ml", some "per 100g", making them basically unable to compare against each other.

You should probably cover the other end of this, where newer, larger packaging at a higher price comes out to look like value packaging. It's part of why we aren't buying 1 chip packages of Doritos for $6.99. (Cough...Paqui...cough...) Shrinkflation is one part of a larger treadmill of deceptive marketing. We saw more coverage of the enlargement side of the treadmill in the 90s and early 2000s when people realized that maybe inhaling 20,000 calorie value servings of grease-covered starch wasn't necessarily the best for our health. That tended to focus on things like fast food fries and sodas, the low-cost add-ons to meals, but it's done across the board and I expect we'll see Doritos do it when what was a 16 oz unit becomes 8 oz. Another aspect of it is that they USE inflation rather than adjust for inflation. As you mentioned here, inflation is around 8% now, a historic spike. But these changes are always FAR more than inflation. Like the Toblerone 25% years before the current inflation. Some of that is to be expected, with floating a little above value at first and only adjusting for inflation every so many years to keep a steady price point, but they latch onto VISIBLE inflation every time and outpace any reasonable floating. And they double dip. The value goes down with a steady price, THEN the price jacks up, both by more than the inflation. Right now, inflation is largely tied to transport of goods. We don't have many raw material shortages, and what ones we have are almost entirely due to a transportation shortage. That means, end-to-end, the inflation is singular. It may not entirely be consistent in application, but the roughly 8% increase to manufacture, 8% to ship and 8% to put it on a shelf add up to 8%, not some multiple of 8%. We generally that as the excuse "yeah, it's x% more expensive from the manufacturer and our expenses are up by x% so it's 2x% more expensive" even though that's an intentional and blatant lie. And I'm not even getting into the intentional lag in employee pay that makes that total cost actually much less than inflation. Inflation is a necessary part of any economy, and it's inherently good because it means money is worth more spent now than saved, increasing the flow of money and thus the economy. But spikes in inflation obviously hurt people. In large part because of that intentional lag in wage increases and intentional exploitation of the idea of inflation to lower value and raise costs like this.

I never knew the “new look” thing was just to hide that there was less food in the package. That’s really interesting. Definitely something I’ll look out for lol

7:37 he says it so calmly LMAO

The first instance of this I noticed in the late '70s, when coffee prices began soaring. The one pound can became 14 oz, then 11 oz. with the two and three-pound cans showing similar shrinkage.

Holy molly, I'm not crazy, everything HAS less product! I have a friend that works with his family in a family owned mini store, and he gave me the advice to always look for the quantity that is being sold as MatPat notes here EVEN BEFORE THIS PHENOMENON WAS BROUGHT TO NOTICE since I live in Mexico. I genuinely felt like I was going crazy at times, but now that shrinkflation is confirmed, I can finally tell my friends about it without being misinformed anymore or even feeling like that crazy person that is often portrayed in movies and actually turns out to be right. I even recently noticed how some bags of peanus that are bagged in a transparent case have been cut by more than a quarter of what they used to offer. And even with the Doritos bag example, I just kept going "yep, definitely" since I did notice these changes. Sometimes there's even products that are labeled as "bigger" but end up giving up less in comparison to just buying two small products, both in quantity and price. Definitely spreading the word around to my friends and family 🧐

Just like Markiplier said in his World's most powerful flashlight video "I WOULDN'T BE SURPRISED IF THIS FLASHLIGHT WAS SHRINKFLATED"

I'm a grocery store manager and the only product I've seen actually grow in size rather then shrink has been frito lay ruffles. They actually made bigger bags and didn't raise the price. I see approximately 10,000 items shrink in size but keep their price every year

the biggest problem is that they are shrinking how much we get while *also* increasing prices

I literally haven't touched a majority of these products in years out of pure spite. Feels good

I actually first heard about this from Peter knetter he was going on one of his usual rants about stuff but he was talking about the same thing how they’ve slowly been shrinking products over Time and charging the same price for it “it’s just gonna keep going until the fun size is regular size and the small size is regular and so on”

I love how MatPat is fully aware of the Creme Egg "Here Today, Goo Tomorrow" and "Goo Games" commercials....those commercials are blursed masterpieces and every single one of them belongs in the Louvre. Second best thing to come out of Britain behind Rowan Atkinson

Lucky me, I don’t have pockets. Maybe you should make a style theory about that

I actually have noticed, because ever since I worked at Dollar Tree I've been more conscious of the net weight. Why pay $1 for a candy bar of 1.5oz when you can pay the extra quarter to get 3.5oz of the same product? Although since I've been working here, some of the boxes of candy have already reduced from 3.5oz to 2.8oz.

I've noticed this happening for about 2 decades now, glad to see other's are noticing, too bad it's too late at this point.

1:45 Kids who are as young as MatPat here may be too young to know that these practices have been going on for decades. Back in the 1970s when Canada started to go metric there were huge changes in package sizes for every product. Many companies hoped that customers would be too busy adjusting to the new system of measurement to notice that a 400 gram package is 12% smaller than a pound (454 g) especially since it was priced the same.

At 5:15, your orange juice example, if you take that further back in time, all orange juice came in half gallons and gallons. But now it comes in 52 oz bottles. But, the generic and store brands still come in half gallons and gallons. So you can compare the size right in the store. To my knowledge there's no such thing as a half gallon carton or bottle of Tropicana Pure Premium any more. The other item I can think of right now is ice cream. in the 70s and 80s, and maybe later, ice cream came in half gallon containers (the typical size we bought). But now the half gallon size has been replaced with 48 oz, or something close to that.

I was gonna comment on the quality aspect on it before you brought it up. I feel like that one is the worst scam. lowering the quality or watering it down to make a profit. Much harder to notice than price or quantity change. not too long ago they changed what kind of cocoabeans they use for one of the most popular brands of chocolate here, they said the change was to give better compensation to the cocoa farmers. But ever since then, the chocolate has tasted subpar, kinda just tastes like cocoafat and bland. I tried comparing the new ingredients to the old ones but to find barely noticable changes. So the difference must be found in the quality of the ingredients, cheaper beans probably has worse taste. Sadly I've found that the majority of people haven't noticed since they kinda don't care as long as it's sweet...