If you have been to a supermarket lately you know very well that the cost of just about everything has gone way up. It’s getting ridiculous. How long can this continue?
I, for one, have been comparing costs more recently than in the past, searching for the best deals. It pays to do this. A penny saved is a penny earned, my pappy used to say.
I drink milk with my coffee and in my cereal for breakfast. So I need to replenish my supply often. Sometimes I buy an organic brand, other times the regular stuff to help support the growth hormone industry (a joke in case you didn’t figure that out). I hardly ever check the labels. After all, a half gallon is a half gallon. Right?
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Check out the photo at the top of this article: Nothing remarkable, right? No, again… wrong! No, what you are likely not noticing is that one of the milk companies is pulling a fast one.
See what I mean on the close-up photo below of those same two milk cartons. Look at how much milk is contained in each of the identically sized containers. On the left, it’s a half-gallon, 64 ounces, what you and I would expect.
But look at the carton on the right. It’s only 59 ounces — five ounces less. But it’s packaged in the same container you and I and everybody else expects to be 64 ounces.
I bought that 59-ounce carton without looking at how much milk it contained. I’ve been buying half-gallon cartons of milk for my entire adult life, and a half gallon has always been a half gallon.
REMEMBER WHEN COFFEE came in one-pound, 16 ounce, cans or packages? Now it’s down to 12 or even 11 ounces. Cheap coffee that once came in 32 ounce cans (a quart) now contains 27 or 28 ounces.
I tend to look at the price a package of coffee, and based on decades of assuming the package was 16 ounces, don’t even give a second thought about much I am getting. Maybe milk producers figured they could trick people in a similar way. Will 59 ounces become the new “half gallon”?
My advice to you, then, when buying milk, is to look at how much is contained in what appears to be a traditional half-gallon container. You might want to do the same with soy milk, orange juice and other liquids.
I’ll be honest: I get mad when I think about this.
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RVT1227b
This is what is called package shrinkage. There are so many examples of this when we go shopping.
People don’t want the price to go up so they just give you less to make the consumer happy. I only buy gallons and so far they have not shrunk. Also I buy 97% fat free milk!
Did you know that whole milk is 96% fat free, in other words 4% fat? Most grocery stores sell milk in 4%, 2%, 1%, or fat free.
Whole milk is not 4% fat, it’s all blended to 3.25 to 3.3.
Apparently, nothing is safe from “shrinkflation”. First, it was ice cream, but now it’s everything.
Diesel costs more, tractors cost more, therefore silage costs more and cows get fed fewer ounces, so they can’t produce a full gallon anymore. First it affected the chickens and their eggs and now it has gotten to the cows. Sad. Support our farmers or we don’t eat. It affected my bacon some time back. Messing with my bacon, eggs and milk could put me off the deep end.
I bought some OJ recently. I had a little left in the old carton and it was 59oz. The new carton looked identical but was 52oz. That was the last time I will buy that brand.
I remember when 2×4 lumber was actually that dimension. Then it went to 1 1/2 x 3 1/2. 1/2″ plywood is also getting thinner.
Had a deck project a couple years ago and the decorative posts for the rails were 4×4’s…well 3.5×3.5. Late last year was finishing another deck. Went to get the same posts and now they are cut to 3 3/8″ x 3 3/8″ ! Had to search several lumber yards to find the old size.
Caveat Emptor…Buyer Beware!
But then as RVers, they actually used to build quality RVs and not much of that is found anymore either! 🤨
LOL – They have been 1 1/2 x 3 1/2 for forever, if you were buying milled kihl dried milled lumber that is.
Exactly. For an actual 2″ x 4″, it is a special order. It has been this way for over 100 years. Anyone swinging a hammer for a living knows this.
Back in the sixties a 2×4 was 1-5/8″x3-5/8″. I remember this because as a grade school boy he made me do the math to figure dimensions when using more than one to strengthen the wall corners and such. I don’t remember when they did away with the extra 1/8″.
This has been happening for at least 50 years. I worked in the grocery business for over 25 years. The first time I noticed this was when a 50 pound bag of dog food was changed to 40 lbs., and 25 lb. changed to 20. Have you looked at the size of ice cream containers lately?
It really started happening around 4 years ago.
Checked OJ at Walmart. Same thing.
Thank you for the heads up, Chuck! Have a great week and safe travels!
The volume is the same but it doesn’t weigh as much because it is low fat. LOL
🤣🤣🤣
In 1947 or 1948 after WW2 when I was 14 or 15, I could buy Hershey bars for a nickel, and they were much larger then than now for over a buck. As for milk, my wife needs lactose free. A box of three half gallon cartons at Costco is only a little more than one half gallon at other markets if they actually stock it. In the 1950s into the 1970s stores and gas stations were sometimes so eager to sell their products that they would offer double S&H Green Stamps. It was about 2005 that we gave up the dirty clothes hamper purchased with books of Green Stamps.
Do you know the Hersey bars today have more air in them to make them look bigger?
I remember when cartons of ice cream were a half gallon, 64 ounces. They started shrinking about 30 years ago, and they are down to 48 ounces now (I just looked at my carton.).
Blue Bell ice cream, which is the best in Texas is still 1/2 gallon. You can also buy it in pint sizes. But every other brand is 48 ounces or less, as you correctly noted.
Sorry Chuck in you shortage. Again no government over view in weight and management. One of those department that it appears to be unnecessary so consumers have protection against fraud. So in your case farmers are getting away with it in this instance. Are you sure you’re getting a true gallon at the gas pump? Or is that a real quart of oil. Or that chocolate bar from your favorite maker seem lighter. Prices go up and having to purchase two of the same item to complete say your baking mission. So double the cost. You might not need the whole of the second purchase but you needed it. Hang in there Chuck it’s sure to get worse.
LOL – yeah “fraud”, the consumer shouldn’t have to read the label. Trust the government to hold your hand and do it for you, huh. Actually, the government regulation i to put the amount of the contents on the packaging, and it should be up to you to read it.
As for the gas pump, I don’t know where you buy your gas but the gas pump I use has the striker on it saying it has been certified by the government.
Oh, and that chocolate bar has more air in it now to keep the size the same. They have been doing that for years but really started doing it a little over 4 years when inflation as going nuts from all the free money being handed out.
There are “weights and measures” agencies, mostly city and county run. They protect against fraud of that type. See the stickers on gas pumps!
You can be sure the farmers aren’t getting anything from shrinking packaging. That’s the ‘manufacterers’ and packagers. Shrinking packages is purely psychological trickery.
It is not the farmers who are responsible for the shrinkage. It is the middleman.
Good catch thank you for your observation. I didn’t realize they had been “cheating” us.
Some major beer brands have done this with 11.2 ounces vs 12 but the bottle looks the same.
Milk is not healthy for adult humans. So just stop. Eat organic oatmeal and take some calcium citrate.
You’ll avoid an overpriced liquid filled with hormones and ultra processed cereal laden with pesticides and industrial chemicals.
Take it from a former dairy farmer, dairy is a scam.
For years, I thought I was buying a 5-pound bag of sugar until one day I took a closer look at the bag. It read, 4 pounds. Needless to say, I was PO’d.
Chuck ice cream has gone the same route. It always used to be half gallons but now are less than that. Shrinkflation has hit nearly every consumable product.
Just look at all of those bags of chips, large bag but only half full. Looks good on the shelf all stacked together but look closely at the weight and the bag is only HALF FULL!
Yep – they are doing the same thing with Ice Cream! The good ol’ 1/2 gallon carton is now 1.5 Qts but of course costs the same or more! It’s downright scary how much a trip to the grocery store costs these days…
Good day Chuck. This seems to be the norm in most packaging these days – and has been for some time. If memory serves the coffee containers were downsized some years ago after a near crop failure in Brazil. Also, you show the containers of milk with the volume marked – as unsuspecting a change as it is with the larger carton besides, but what, if any, was the price difference between the two companies? The volume is different and I presume the contents are as stated. It is, as always, buyer beware in most everything – evaluate/ compare!
Regular milk test on average 3.0-3.2 % fat. Tested enough of it to know! Tastes better also.
I’m not a fan of shrinkflation either. I first noticed it on OJ. We rarely buy it now. We always look at the unit price – i.e., price per ounce. DW now buys Hershey’s dark chocolate instead of “Great Value”. GV is cheaper, but the bag is smaller and the unit price is actually higher than the name brand.
Stay safe and shop smart, Joe
Please don’t blame the farmer-producer for these devious shrinkages.
Those decisions are made by the packager-wholesaler. The farmer markets in bulk to the packager-wholesaler.
Yeah, instead of raising the price, they reduce the volume. Something done for a long time. But to add, back in the 1970’s milk was hauled one way and chemicals the other way. Now that is thankfully illegal.
Chuck, producers have been doing this to us for a while now. They cut down the amount in the package, and keep the larger package. Then they cut back the package. Unless you are a careful shopper you will not really notice the difference. But once you become an astute shopper you will notice this happening regularly. Oh, and by the way, while the size goes down, the price goes up. I have noticed this regularly here in Canada and in the US when I traveled there.
The retailers cannot control “shrinkflation” but some, like Walgreen’s and Safeway have labels on the shelves that not only show the product name and price but often show the price per ounce for much easier comparison without having to use a calculator.
I hate when companies do this package shrinking. So they spend money retooling their lines, changing labels, etc. They should just raise it a few more cents and leave the size alone. We have bought Ragu Pasta Sauce for decades. Usually the medium size jar, you know, the one you can easily hold in one hand. maybe about 6 inches tall. Well quite some time ago, it was 32oz, then they dropped it 2oz at a time, 4 TIMES and now what is basically the same size jar, is only 24oz. And other manufacturers have done the same, Prego for one. What a freakin’ waste. Just charge a little more, if they really have to, crooks!
Ice cream use to be sold in half gallon containers, hasn’t been half gallon for years.
The producers are not the problem, the farmers see none of the gains. It’s all the marketers that deceive you in their packaging.