The Incredible Shrinking Food Package: Is This Silent Inflation?

As the experienced procurement manager in my house (in other words the one who does the grocery shopping), nothing gets past my sharp eye or the hardwired scale and calculator that reside within my brain. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one who notices. But, in talking with other “household procurement managers” I know that I am not. Yet, I do think that many of us don't even realize what is happening before our eyes, to our bank accounts and to the nation’s economy.

Do you already know what I am talking about? If you have been to the grocery store in the past couple of years, I am sure you have noticed. Food packages are shrinking, yet we are paying the same price or more for these smaller-sized items.

It started a few years ago with items such as ice cream, yogurt, cereal and more. The companies are very strategic about their packaging. From the front, packages such as cereal boxes and square cartons of ice cream look the same. It isn't until we actually pick them up that we can see the boxes are much narrower in width, in fact shockingly so.  I even remember one yogurt company advertised that their brand was now lower in calories, when truly, their containers were just smaller in size. Many food companies cleverly changed the shape of their packaging in the past few years. Sometimes they do things like I mentioned above with the skinny boxes, while other times, such as in the case of yogurt or ice cream containers, they keep the top the same width but narrow the bottom to hold less. Hmmm, they think we are easily deceived. Are you?

Since then, I have seen it in just about every area of the grocery store. A 5lb bag of sugar has been replaced with a 4lb bag. Has the price gone down? No, in fact it is higher in many cases. You will find this in the frozen food sections, too. The weight has either gone down or fewer items are in the packages. You might find this has happened to many items on your grocery list and is probably in more areas than you realize. But they truth is many consumers don’t even notice, and do you know what? That is what these companies are counting on to happen.

For items that would be more noticeable if they were changed in size, we now have a higher price tag on them. Many items such as milk, bread, meat, cheese, eggs and produce have sky-rocketed in price in the past year alone. These are just a few examples of higher prices that we are paying at the checkstand. We grow much of that produce here in our area, but we are paying more than in many parts of the country for the same items. Strawberry prices are higher than I ever remember, and yet we can look around us and see them growing in our fields locally. A friend of mine in Chicago told me how she had just bought Watsonville strawberries, and she was paying 1.50 per pound fairly regularly. Good luck finding that here where they grow. Apple prices are also fairly high, as well as most produce. I don’t think I can justify buying one avocado on sale for 2.00 on my budget.

While having a family to feed on a very tight budget, I find myself going to many different stores to find the better deals, and I have noticed that it is getting harder and harder to find those sales. With clever marketing we are lured in for one item, but an item that goes with it is not on sale and priced higher than ever. The stores are hoping you won’t go to another store to buy the other items that aren't on sale since you are already there. Sometimes, items are jumping up a few dollars in a month’s time. It is all very clever marketing, but it is at our expense. I have been grocery shopping on a tight-budget for many years and have never seen anything like this before.

As I went through my grocery store line last week, silently fuming over my cart full of smaller packages and higher prices, my cashier also noticed the bag of 4lb sugar as she picked it up. She told me how items are getting smaller throughout the store, even canned goods weigh less and she notices when she scans them.

For those of us who don’t just put things in our carts without paying attention, we see the difference, we are not deceived. I feel cheated that it is less, and I know they are trying to pull a fast one on me. At least with a higher price tag, I can see that I am paying more.

For many of us, we expect the food that we buy to last the same amount of time as it did before, but it doesn’t because there is less. We haven’t adjusted our budgets to buy more food.  I would rather see the higher prices and get the same amount of food, and not be misled. I don’t want to buy double the amount of something, when I just need the amount I was getting before. I don’t know about you, but my family’s budget can’t handle that.

The risings food costs are often blamed on the rise in gas prices to transport the goods. We are hit with a double-whammy here; we are not only paying more for our own gas, but we are also paying more for the gas to bring us our food, or so we are told. I also want to point out that some of that food is actually grown and packaged here, locally. In looking at it, paying what could be a few dollars more per item doesn’t seem to add up to the cost of fuel that is actually used. I have seen no reports that break this down for us. 

I see this as a form of silent inflation. I would think that this could skew national economic reports in a few different ways. It appears that consumers are buying more items when technically they aren’t. In reality, we are buying the same amount of food at a higher price. Tracking of consumer spending is not done on an ounce per ounce basis, but on the actual item bought. Consumer spending reports would show that prices are stable, and our spending is higher, and that consumers are doing better, and are buying more. But are we really? I don't know about you, but we are not doing better. I am buying the same amount, or less, at a much higher price overall. I say less, because I have given up buying many items due to the fact that I would have to pay more to get the same amount, but I don't have more to spend. As our parents always told us, money doesn't grow on trees.

Many households aren’t able to buy all the food they need to feed their families. A recent article from ABC news talks about an eye-opening study released by Feed America which indicates that up to 1 in 4 American children are going hungry. Has anyone even considered all of the reasons why this could be? One of them could be the cost of food and this silent way of giving us less food for more money when many are actually bringing in less income than they were 10 years ago. Numerous people have lost their jobs in the recent years, and many of these same people who are fortunate to find another job are taking it at a substantial decrease in salary. While others who are lucky enough to keep their jobs have also taken a decrease in pay, or are not getting any kind of cost of living increase.

Charity may begin at home, but instead of just charity, why don’t we make food affordable for families? I am not talking about any food, but healthy food. Buying healthy food is more expensive than ever. In our family, we have cut back on everything. Trying to keep a healthy balance within our budget is extremely difficult. I think most families have already cut back. Many are to the edge and can’t cut back one more thing without going hungry and have already sacrificed healthy choices for their families. The next step is hunger. Unfortunately, many families are already there and going hungry. You might be surprised to find out just how many people that you know are going hungry, and probably in your own neighborhood. You might also be surprised that many of these people have what used to be considered good jobs, and once was thought to be a solid income. They would probably never tell you that they were one of those statistics who are going hungry.

I don’t know about you, but my household income hasn’t increased, and neither has my budget. For my family, and for many other American households, everything has gone up except our paychecks. This is a quiet form of an economic crisis for us as individuals, and is not reflected in national economic reporting. We need to see the truth in what consumers are spending vs. what we are actually getting. Price and value are two different things.

Silent inflation might actually be a major factor in the undoing of the American dream, much more than we realize.