Tuesday, September 23, 2008
When I first learned to cook, my dad and I made pancakes. I would create my own pancake topping with honey, syrup, three types of sugar and bits of candy. When I presented my delicious mixture to my parents, my mom would say, “Sometimes, Cara, less is more.” Of course, she wouldn’t eat my sugary concoction.
Little did I know that in the food manufacturing business, less really is more. As in you get less food, and you pay more for it.
Thanks to the rising price of fuel, everything costs more, including food. Companies such as Kellogg’s have chosen to take the edge off these increases by subtly decreasing the amount of product per box of cereal or jug of orange juice in order to hide price increases.
And with good reason. According to MousePrint.org, a consumer advocacy site, the price of the traditional 11-ounce box of Kellogg’s Apple Jacks would have jumped almost a dollar this summer because of the rising costs of ingredients.
Instead, Kellogg’s slimmed the box down to 8.7 ounces and left the price the same, under the assumption that consumers would notice their wallets getting lighter but probably not their box of cereal.
Ice cream companies have fudged on traditional quantities of ice cream, too. Usually sold in pints and half gallons, Dreyers and Breyers have gradually shrunk their “half gallons” by almost a pint. The problem has become so rampant that Bluebell Ice Cream based its ad campaigns around their containers being “still a half gallon.”
About 30 percent of packaged goods have shrunk their sizes, some with price decreases, some without, according to USA TODAY. And this trend, at least in the cereal and ice cream businesses, has been going on for several years.
As MousePrint’s editor Edgar Dworsky put it, “I'm waiting to open a carton of eggs and see only 11.”
Companies clearly state the number of ounces on the packages, but when those numbers slowly go down while cost slowly goes up, customers feel cheated. Perhaps companies would do better if as they changed their packaging they labeled it as “economy-sized,” redefining the term to mean “smaller.” Our economy shrinks along with products.
More companies are willing to subtly shortchange the customer in a strange attempt to better serve you.
Customers are aware that these are hard times for our economy. Companies should acknowledge that prices have to change as the cost of commodities goes up. Likewise, we the customers will have to respond with understanding.
McConnell is a Dallas junior in English.
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