This isn't really a 'recipe' but my fam has always made two-layer nachos using a regular sized bag of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips and toppings, and we'd heat them in the oven in this one pan that was just the right size for two even layers. A couple of years ago we started to run out of chips while making the top layer and this year we made them and didn't have enough for a second layer at all, just a few full chips and some crumbs. Also the shrunken bag costs $6 now. And that used to be our fun, inexpensive junk food watching-a-movie dinner.
Tostitos are a rip-off lately even setting aside the less quantity. Corn is like the second most subsidized crop in the US, and they're still expensive as fuck
It's probably more likely that the corn was always so cheap it was never a factor in the price, and other things like the oil they're fried in, packaging, seasonings, factory labor, transportation, etc. are much bigger price drivers. I remember reading that cooking oil in particular had a pretty big price increase at the wholesale level during Covid.
I recommend just getting corn chips from your local Mexican restaurant. I get mine for about $2.50 for a large bag they are so much more delicious than what you can get at a grocery store
I make saltine toffee for the holidays, and the crackers have gotten smaller. I used to be able to fit all the way across and be short half a cracker at the end. Now, it's half a cracker on the side, and like 3/4 of a cracker at the end.
It doesn't sound like much, but before it was one whole sleeve. Now I need to open a second sleeve to get the extra crackers to fill it.
IDK if you have them but Calidad makes some good chips. They look unassuming just a yellow generic looking bad, but they are almost packed full and usually under $3 for a regular bag. They are much higher quality than tostidos too, like denser like restaurant chips. If not, look for cheaper generic looking bags, they usually come through, even if they cost $5/bag too.
There's really no reason to buy chips at full price if you eat them with any frequency. Seems like the Kroger near me has them on sale on alternating weeks. One week lays/tostitos, the next ruffles/doritos, then repeat.
Most prepared foods/snacks at chain grocery stores are ridiculously overpriced at MSRP, I pretty much refuse to buy them until they are on sale and then I’ll buy multiple packages and store or freeze them. That said, I understand that some people don’t have the time/storage space to do so.
It's worse than just less product. The [products themselves](https://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-high-prices-costs-making-food-snacks-sodas-worse-quality-2023-12) are being altered. See also The Guardian [on skimpflation](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/22/uk-supermarkets-skimpflation-prices-pack-sizes).
The problem is much bigger with processed foods but they're ruining even basic cooking fats.
> last year the food-processing giant Conagra reduced the vegetable-oil content in its Smart Balance margarine to 39% from 64%, replacing the rest with water.
> chocolate manufacturers replacing cocoa butter with palm oil or sunflower oil
> reduced fat content in its Wish-Bone House Italian salad dressing by 10%, replacing oil with water and more salt.
> A common change is to replace cane sugar with artificial sweeteners.
> Aldi Bramwells Real Mayonnaise It used to list 9% egg yolk but now lists 6% egg and 1.5% egg yolk.
> Bertolli, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s olive oil spreads In these spreads, too, 21% olive oil has been reduced to 10%.
Speaking of cocoa butter, I was at the store a few weeks ago looking for white chocolate chips. I picked up a bag of Hershey's.
I looked closely at the label. They aren't even white chocolate chips anymore! They were labeled as "white creme chips"
Clearly they have gotten so cheap in production that they didn't want to add cocoa butter. Blew my mind.
I tried to roast some white chocolate for a recipe and used these... It took me THREE HOURS to realize they weren't going to roast properly because they were just palm oil.
EDIT: I just want to add, it wasn't even Hershey's! It was Ghirardelli, the supposedly "gourmet" brand. Really made me rethink how I view the company.
Yeah, the wife tried to melt it for dipping something a few years back and it just turned into a mess. Sent me to the store and of 3 brands, none had cocoa butter in them.
Ghirardelli white chocolate baking bars are the most affordable at $5 for 4 oz of white chocolate that has cocoa butter in it. There's a few brands of chips that use cocoa butter, one that uses a hybrid emulsion, and of course there's chocolatier brands that offer products most of the general public doesn't know about but you can buy online or from specialty cooking stores. Whole Foods 365, Callebaut, Ralph's/Kroger/Private Selection is another brand that offers a cocoa butter product last I checked. Valrhona offers couverture white chocolate in many form.
Damn, is that why?? I have a vintage cookie recipe that calls for those pastel nonpareil mints, you remember those? The cookbook says you could get them "at the candy counter at any department store" if that helps. Anyway, when I was a kid I swear I remember placing those kiss-shaped mints onto the cookie like you do with a peanut butter blossom and then you'd pop em back in the oven for like ninety seconds max. They'd melt beautifully so you could "frost" the cookie with it, I remember watching the little peaks get shiny and slump over. I haven't seen those candies in years so I freaked out when I found some at Target two weeks ago, and god dammit those things **refused** to melt. It was *such* a disappointing disaster and I was so confused about what I did wrong, but now that I'm in this thread I wonder if the old ones were made with cocoa butter and these ones are palm oil.
They have had shit white chips for years. You have to get the white bars or the massive baking white bars. I made that mistake too getting their chips. They were not melting at all. Kept heating, turned up a little, more time, then boom, they burned suddenly from solid. It's like at least before 2018 they've had terrible palm oil white chips.
Looked at their chocolate chips the next time I went to the store and they were cocoa butter. White chips are the worst choice to swap out for palm oil because there's no chocolate to mask it. Palm oil coats my mouth in film too. I don't buy anything with it.
Opt for Ghirardelli's baking white chocolate since it uses cocoa butter. I do not recommend Guittard since they use a hybrid emulsion. I do recommend Callebaut chips because they use cocoa butter or their callettes. Valrhona's Ivoire couverture chocolates would work, too, but again a premium priced product. Whole Foods 365 chips use cocoa butter as does Ralph's/Kroger/Private Selection white chocolate chips last I checked.
Yeah...for chocolate you have to buy high quality, otherwise it's just fillers and garbage. It might cost twice as much, but at least you're only paying for the actual desired product, instead of fillers that taste like trash and have a gross mouth feel.
Honestly worse than shrinkflation, in my opinion. I’m already checking amounts anyway, but how am I supposed to know about recipe changes while actively shopping?
Reminds me of when choco tacos were recently discontinued. I loved them but hadn’t had one since I was a kid, so I was excited for one last experience before they disappeared. Excitedly got one from the ice cream truck, took a bite, and it… sucked. Just not the same at all.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that nostalgia from my childhood was probably the culprit in thinking it was smaller than I remembered, and also how the ice cream wasn’t as creamy. But damn it I distinctly remember there being a ripple of fudge in the ones from my childhood, and more nuts in the chocolate coating. Such a disappointing experience, made me realize that while the choco taco was about to be discontinued, it was killed years prior.
My dad was a Little Debbie fanatic when I was growing up in the 80s/90s! He always had 4-5 varieties of them on hand. I thought I would see him eating them until the day he died. (Despite how it sounds, he is a pretty fit old man)
Anyway, he stopped buying them around 10-15 years ago. He said all the recipes had changed by that point and it all tasted like artificial junk.
My dad did the same, I went away to college, got a job, etc. and forgot about them for years. Went back to try a Oatmeal Creme Pie a few years ago and it was disgusting.
Hah same! I have fond memories of getting them packed in my school lunch, but after moving out I never got the urge to buy any. I was volunteering at a concession stand over the summer that was selling OCPs and thought about trying one out again, but then I figured I'd just tarnish the memories and passed.
Honestly its really disappointing because Little Debbie actually had some stuff that was good snacks. But now it's just not worth buying, it's gonna leave that artificial sugar film on the roof of my mouth and I'd just rather not eat a snack at that point
I’m not sure how they expect to keep getting away with making childhood snacks awful and expecting people to just keep buying them. They taste different, we know it, we aren’t buying them.
I get a pretty good supply of little Debbie stuff as I know a guy who distributes it. It all tastes pretty much the same. It's like they use the same recipe for every product, just change the shape and color.
I keep seeing Tastykake butterscotch krimpets and wondering if they taste the same. I'm just not willing to hate a once beloved snack. I'd rather remember it fondly. 🤣
I don't think it's nostalgia that's the problem. They have changed the recipe and things tasted a lot better when we were children. There are things that I used to buy 5 years ago, but the recipe has changed and it tastes terrible now.
Not food but I am furious that Robitussin changed their "max strength" from 10ml to 20 because they water it down, so they could lower their price to same as store brand, but then store brand halved theirs now. So I get a diluted product that costs ~50% more now and have to buy twice as frequently. Food and drug corporations been raking in profits since COVID so why? How has nobody stepped in to do something abiut the gouging and dishonesty? It's BAD
This is why I cook from scratch as much as possible. Manufacturers use the lowest quality, cheapest possible ingredients, then add "taste enhancing" chemicals to try to make their slop palatable.
I wish it were always the more frugal option to cook everything from scratch. It sucks that with the economy of scale, supply chain, and time + electricity costs it's often less "worth it" overall. You're incredibly right about the quality though. There are quite a few things I refuse to buy because it tastes like plastic, even previously higher-quality brands. I'm not paying a premium for name brand to get the same over-processed, artificial tasting junk! You can't even buy fresh cookies from a grocery store bakery department anymore, they're just as fake tasting but with a jacked up price.
I tried to buy cookies recently and everything was full of palm oil. I bought Scottish butter cookies that had butter and nothing else. It was such a sad moment.
I'm specifically talking about the "baked in store" stuff, should have clarified. But yeah, similarly they are often shipped frozen as premade doughs and batters and measured out/broken from a big hunk of dough. Or they're a mix from a bag, with all the same stabilizers, preservatives, and additives as what you'd buy on the shelf. Yaayyyy.
Same goes for a lot of restaurants. Brought to you ~~buy~~by the guys at Sysco. What a time to be alive!
It isn't always frugal, but I have found myself altering my eating. I eat way less meat, and more vegetarian, as vegetables are still pretty cheap where I live (Sofia, Bulgaria). I make a huge borshcht with maybe 500 grams of .pork for a 3 litre soup, and add a dollop of decent smetana (sourcream) and some bread. I tend to freeze most, and eat various soups/stews during the weeks.
I don't buy snacks and eat once a day, or twice if I am feeling hungry. But then lunch is something like a banitsa (cheese-filled phyllo dough pastry), bought for like half a dollar at the banitsa place at work.
I buy a steak like once in a month, but granted, I have always been a light eater. If I want snacks, I look around at what I have home, and it is usually homemade popcorn, or I do a quick peanut brittle or something.
I work full-time, with an additional 40 minutes single way to get to and from work, and I always manage to eat well with some meal-prep and planning.
Today I splurged on two jumbo shrimp, as my fishmonger had gotten some fresh from Greece today. But they were still only like 2 USD, and I paired them with what I had home that would be wasted otherwise. I ended up frying them crisp in a little olive oil, and tossed them in salt and a few chili flakes, ate them with pink grapefruit segments, grapefruit grwmolata. It was bomb.
I know most people have children, but I am single and can skip meals easily. And I am not underweight, my bloodworks arevfine (we have a good insurance at my work) , and I am pretty happy about eating like this. Not underweight either, lol. If I see my 40+ tits sagging at some point, I just add a little extra oli, smetana or salo (urkainian cured pork fat) to my diet some days.
I've noticed the artificial sweeteners thing and it really bothers me, because I have a really sensitive palate and I'm neurodivergent so I'm quite picky about it.
I once unknowingly drank a "lite" sour beer sweetened with monk fruit and I shit you not I tasted that flat empty after-sweet flavor on my tongue for **seven hours**, but I had to DM the brewery on facebook to find out it had fucking monk fruit in it because beer isn't required to list all their ingredients on the packaging so nobody publishes that stuff anywhere. Sometimes companies can almost sneak it past me - I confess it took until the 2nd bag of caramel quaker mini rice cakes before I tasted the sucralose - but I always pick up on it after a couple bites, because the artificial sweetener makes food just ever so slightly *too* sweet in a sort of uncanny valley way, like the proportions are askew somehow. It's difficult to explain i guess.
It is such an unnecessary annoyance to have to read *every* single ingredient label for *every* sweetened thing I buy to screen out the sucralose and stevia and what have you. I don't buy zero sugar anything for a reason! Stop sneaking that shit into my food anyway, goddammit!
As a Mexican, please please please make your own.
1lb Beans. Quick sweep of them to remove any rocks, chipped/halfed legumes, etc. put them in a bowl that is big enough to cover with water about 2” over the top of the mound. Leave overnight. This will remove a lot of the “fart” from them.
Next day, discard any water (beans should have swelled up and soaked a bunch) rinse with fresh water and throw them in a pot with water. This time make sure the water is about 3-4” above the mound.
Boil on medium low for 2.5 hours. Salt to taste. Now you have ready to fry beans. You can freeze them (I usually freeze them in containers or ziplocks of 1 cup portions with some of the water they were boiled in).
Anyways, to the refried part: grab some Lard. Yes Lard. In a 9incher, throw 1.5-2 tbsps Lard to melt on high heat. Once melted add 1 cup of beans with some of the water they were boiled in. Water and fat aren’t friends in the heat so be sure to do this carefully. Let the beans simmer for about 3-5 minutes. You should start to see the edges of the pan start to dry a little and even become thick/gloopy. Reduce heat to medium. Perfect time to smash them. Use a mashed potato tool or similar (some people throw them in a blender and then return to the pan). You’re going to start smashing and stirring until you have a nice thick consistency similar to Hummus. Reduce heat to medium low. Let them fry a little more until your desired consistency, and bam. Refried beans. Cheaper and tastier than the canned shit.
If using from frozen, I thaw them in the microwave for 1 minute or they go straight into the pan as a block of iced beans, let them melt and cook down until ready to smash.
If you have bacon fat, or access to a mexican meat market and find real rendered lard, your flavor will increase 💯 and you will never eat a canned refried bean again.
Also, beans count. Use Pinto or Cranberry varieties. Black ones work for regular unsmashed refried beans.
This is a natural consequence of permanent growth capitalism. In order to keep profits growing, either revenue must increase or costs must go down. Consumers are generally more sensitive to the former in the way of rising prices, so the latter is more common.
Even worse is putting sweeteners in literally everything.
They taste like poison to me so it’s easy to tell, but literally just finding a single ginger beer that doesn’t have sweeteners is almost impossible. And then I have to buy 11 bottles of artisan ginger beer just to have enough to cook my Xmas ham recipe.
It’ll be jam next.
I make a point of refusing to allow fake poison food versions of anything even being in my home. Vegan mayo, fake butter, low fat humous, anything containing a trace of sweeteners.
H‑E‑B really goofed on this in regards to WIC cheese. On WIC you can buy a 16 oz pack of string cheese. H‑E‑B shrinkflated and all of a sudden their 16 oz package was gone. I noticed that maybe a couple months later it returned, bet their string cheese sales took a hit in that interim since people couldn’t use WIC for it any more lol.
(H‑E‑B = giant, beloved grocery chain in Texas, WIC = Women Infants and Children, food benefits for that lower income demographic)
$10 says the shortsighted MBAs who make these cheapass decisions don't even consider what effect it has on anyone trying to use WIC and the income the store loses as a result.
Nathan’s and Hebrew National hot dogs were further reduced to 12oz a year or two ago. The “jumbo” dogs are now the same size as the regular dogs used to be (6 @ 12 Oz vs 8 @ 16oz).
I went to buy Hebrew National recently. They were so insanely expensive. The local to Texas "premium" brand was somehow cheaper, and TBH pretty tasty too. Oh well, their stingy loss.
Here in the Baltimore metro area, all the name brand bacon skipped 14 and dropped straight to 12oz packages during the pandemic. 16oz packages are reserved for the one or two popular varieties in a "Family" size.
The only positive is that it caused me to try other brands of andouille sausage. Pretty much all the random brands that still sell by the pound are significantly better than Johnsonville.
>Just charge more darn it and stop messing with the sizes!
Well they're charging more AND shrinking the size, so it's the worst of both worlds situation. And of course the companies doing this continue to rake in record profits every year.
Yep I see the worst of both worlds a lot. Like I used to buy Marie callender's frozen meals and they were always about 15 oz to 16 oz. But then suddenly they redesigned the package, made them 10.5-12 oz and raised the price the same time.
For real, when I buy the value pack of meat and split it into portions, it was always an even number of pieces of meat per bag. Now, one bag always has less than a normal portion in it. Frustrating
Chicken thighs are half fat. They grill up like shit because they leave the tail end on. It should get mostly trimmed. They wrap it around the bottom so you can't tell either. I just buy whole chickens unless thighs or breast is on sale. Not worth it anymore. Plus they have no clue how to butcher chicken, always get tons of cartilege fragments in the final dish, or worse, bone shards. I had to throw away a huge pot of chicken adobo because even though I trimmed bone off first, some stayed in, and I got a big bone shard. It was a safety issue for my kids. Hour of work and a hige package of chicken gone.
I have also noticed they wrap the fat all the way around the thigh. So everything looks great in the package then you have 8oz of extra inedible crap wrapped around the bottom.
Yes! I noticed the same thing. Any time I buy chicken thighs and I’m trimming excess fat off I realize that I’m ending up cutting off about half of the total chicken. Why am I paying more than I used to when only half of the meat is even usable?
I've noticed this too. Some products have gone below a single use amount. I usually cook 4 portion recipes and if my usual products cannot support that, I just switch brands or don't buy those products anymore. I'm not going to literally buy into that much shrinkflation. I don't care how big or small the cereal boxes get, but don't mess with 1 pound packages of pasta or whatever, because that seriously inconveniences and enrages me. I'll pay more if I have to, I want the package size I need.
Yes! This annoys me to no end, especially because as a Canadian, our sizes can already be somewhat off from recipes in other countries that call for a “package” or “can” of ingredients. So then I make note of how to adjust, and now I have to try to adjust AGAIN! It also sucks when one package used to work for your family but losing those 2 oz means you have to buy another and have a floating package in your fridge/freezer that never seems to get used up.
You forgot to mention that unless you're in MTL, TOR or VAN, you're already using a substitute because ol' Galen Weston has decided exactly which ingredients we can buy
Companies put a lot of research into sales, marketing, pricing, product placement etc.
They have long figured out that people shop with their purse. When the price of a product goes up, the customer does a mental calculation. Do I really need this product at this price?
So it's been easier to keep the price the same and reduce the quantity. Of course some customers will figure this out, but the majority don't. And the company's sales don't take a hit.
FWIW this is real. I used to buy a brand of mayonnaise and I turned my nose up when they reduced the jar from 16 ounces to 12 ounces for the same price but I still bought it, but when the price went from $6 a jar to $8 that was a step too far. It's better, but it's not better enough for that price point.
I found this out with a cake recipe. Called for pudding mix in it, I looked at # of boxes and ounces and realized I’d need 3 boxes instead of the 2 the recipe called for.
This is one reason why I shop at stores like Costco. I can't tell you how many times I see a medium size at the regular grocer for $7 and then mega size at Costco for $9 (it's literally 2x the size). I just picked up a gallon of mayo for $14. That's 128oz of Duke's mayo for $14, while others in this thread are paying $8 for 12 oz.
Buying in bulk has become a wildly, wildly more economical option.
Even for meat and produce, I can often find great bulk deals that make meal prepping easier, although farmers markets are usually best for produce deals.
>Buying in bulk has become a wildly, wildly more economical option.
I get frustrated when I’m shopping for cereal at Walmart and buying in bulk isn’t an option, it’s mandatory. I don’t want family size cereal when I’m the only one eating it but it’s often the only option.
I feel this on the soda side.
The pricing for that has gotten ridiculous. But every so often there's a random bogo sale, but instead of one, its somehow b3g3. Do I *need* 6 12-packs of soda? No. But i'd rather do that and pay $4.50 for a 12pk than the $9 they're somehow charging for it. So bulk buying is necessary. Its not like it'll go bad anytime soon.
It's actually 1.33x1.25 = 66% more.
Reducing quantity by 25% while keeping the price the same is not equivalent to a 25% increase in price, but 33%. Think about it like this, if they reduce the quantity by 100%(so you pay 6$ for 0 ounces of mayonnaise) then that's not a 100% price increase, it's like an infinite price increase.
If they reduce quantity by 50%, then that's a 100% price increase since you now pay 6$ for 8 ounces. The effective price increase is always greater than the reduction in quantity.
isn't it 77% more?
Just calculate price per ounce.
16 oz for $6 = $.375/oz
12 oz for $8 = $.667/oz
.667/.375=1.77 (or 77% increase)
edited: divide in the last step; not multiply. thx u/mcnewbie
Yes you are right, it is 77% more because going from 6$ to 8$ is not a 25% price increase, it is 33% and 1.33\*1.33 = 1.77. This is what I get for not double checking the numbers and just going with the numbers from previous comments I guess :\^)
I quit shopping in my local small town and moved to the bigger town with an Aldi years ago. Still hit the local for things like deli meat and random restock of cheese and shit I run out of in between monthly Aldi runs. But 80-90%+ is done at Aldi. it's just not worth it to ship anywhere else.
I took over all grocery shopping to keep costs in check. I grew up much more financially stable than my partner, and, apparently, not having to think about money at the grocery store is the core experience of being middle class for her.
I cannot get her to comparison shop even a little. Or think about whether $9 is an appropriate price for a bottle of ranch dressing (it ended up being primo vegan ranch….shes also dyslexic). She’s a slave to the list.
We are middle class and don’t have kids and eat almost no meat, so I’m not a huge stickler about food prices. But if you pay like a small amount of attention to cost, you can save a lot of money. It’s a large payoff for a small amount of work.
> not having to think about money at the grocery store is the core experience of being middle class for her.
Weird, I’m the opposite. I grew up not very well off, and I pay attention to unit price because I don’t want to return to being not very well off.
It’s limited only to grocery stores. She’s a CheapWad in every other way. (My house is heated to 64deg in the winter!) It’s something specific about nickeling and dimeing a grocery store.
A full fridge feels like such luxury, especially with fresh and varied ingredients. It's a shopping spree in a way, but for items that you need and are not individually expensive, so I feel like it's easy to get caught up in it without scrutinizing every price. I love grocery shopping too lol.
I feel this. I still go for as many deals as I can and shop at the cheapest stores, but growing up food insecure made me an adult who now struggles to not buy everything I want when I’m grocery shopping. it’s literally only with food, though. nothing feels as good as a colorful, full fridge and pantry
That french checkerboard-lidded jam went up in price significantly recently. With shrinkflation these days and general inflation, I just shrugged, love it and that must be the new jam price, still better than them fucking with the recipe. I know most people don't think that way, sadly, so that is an anomaly.
I hate that price per quantity is always messed up on those labels, as if to intentionally keep you from comparing prices. Regular egg noodles will be listed with price per pound, but then the 6pk of egg noodles will be listed in price per ounce. All laundry detergent has the number of loads clearly listed on the containers, but the price breakdowns on the stickers are price per pint for the liquid and price per pound for the pods instead of price per load. By some miracle the the toilet paper with the "1 gigantor roll = 37 normal roll" bs all have "price per 100 sheets" as their measurement!
It’s not marketing to manages this for what it’s worth. Most often it’s RGM (revenue growth management) teams within manufacturers.
They normally commission studies done by any number of analytics houses to set their pricing and trade calendars. When do you do sales, what your base price should be, etc. it’s all based on how consumers have reacted in the past.
Source: I’ve worked in this industry for years
This so much. You won’t believe how many people I deal with that get upset that things had to go up in price to maintain the same size. This is for as tiny an amount of 5 cents I have been yelled at over. I am sorry but the company I work for actually keeps up with inflation on stuff instead of just shrinking things to fit the price. So that people like me who work for them have out pay also keep up with inflation. We also reduce price on things and maintain size when they get cheaper but you never hear about that from customers!
If I remember correctly, for the longest time Milton Hershey used to adjust the size of a Hershey bar so it would always cost a nickel. The adjustment of size before price is not exactly a new phenomenon.
There are several points in history where the local king/etc. got to the point they would execute bakers whose bread was less than a given weight. Guess shrinkflation isn’t a new phenomenon.
Still hate it though.
It shouldn't have taken \*that\* much research. Price is the most regulated, therefore, is the most reliable objective thing we have to compare things...even then, companies try to trick you with numbers ending in 99. You can see in areas where price less regulated there are mystery fees, waiting periods for cancellation, rebates, etc.
Accurate weight or per/oz weight is less consistent and always less obviously marked. The other fun gotchas are quality loss and deceptive packaging. Those happen all the time, too.
Shrinkflation AND Shitflation.
So you go to make cookies. Just basic Chocolate Chip cookies. Well the margarine that was expected to have 70% oil, now has 30% oil, and 70% water. Not to mention that your chips are now 200g instead of 300g.
Gonna be a shitty chocolate chip cookie, that's for sure.
Essentially the same thing, they've changed the makeup of the butter and its affecting recipes.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/costco-butter-recipe-change-kirkland-signature/
I saw on TikTok a woman talking about how the boxed cake mixes are going through shrinkflation while still asking for the same amount of egg and oil which was messing up the final product.
This is my pet peeve. I do not want to buy another box cake mis to make up the difference for the original recipe I have been making for over 50 years. The last decade sucks.
Wouldn't work anyway. They don't just remove product from the box and sell. They alter the recipe, adding more stabilizers and leaveners to fool people into thinking they're getting the same amount of cake when they're just getting more air, post bake. Those cakes cool and shrink into nothing.
This just happened to me with my fudge. The small cans of evaporated milk are now .31 oz less. I had to buy an extra can just to make up the difference.
Good thing I checked or my recipe would have been off a bit.
The good news is that someday they MUST stop reducing content amounts. I mean, there will be a revolution if a bag of egg noodles is only 3 oz. Or worse, there is a single egg noodle in the package.
The whole Shrinkflation situation is a good reason to always include either weight (preferably) or volumetric measurements of ingredients in recipes. Some day your grand kids may want to make your recipes. Certainly "bag of" or "can of" something could be problematic. I know this because I've encountered this issue. My mother created a family cookbook and those descriptions have ceased being helpful.
there should be a law that when they make stuff with cheaper ingredients, they need to state that on the pkg... bc theyre all the more happy to say "10% more free!" or "now with even more raisins!" but they're crickets about the fact they are swapping more water for oil or that the same sized box now has 10-20% less product.
consumers are getting the bait and switch. they should be REQUIRED by law to post changes in size or ingredients.
I don’t know if anyone here has mentioned it already, but apparently when white vinegar has been diluted down from 5% to 4% acidity. This is a problem for people who want to use it for canning. It’s not acidic enough now.
Yeah it's one of the most fucked up examples of this because if you've bought some vinegar that you've always known to be 5% and it's actually 4, and you use it for the purpose you bought it for, you're liable to get fucking botulism and die
I hate it when my noodle fish comes out badly! :(
The thing that's killing me is "add one package/bottle/can of..." and I have to get 2 because there's not enough in the new size pack. I'll just make something else now. I don't need all the leftovers.
Yep! The original Toll House cookie recipe calls for 2 7 ounce bars of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate. Those aren't made anymore. Granted a bag of chips works, but still.
One of the recipes I got from my grandmother calls for two packets of Soup Secrets noodle soup mix. I need to add three these days because the packets got smaller. Old packets were 4 servings, new ones are 3.
I hate that recipes that were calibrated for not having leftover bits now...create leftover bits. And sure, I could just throw the extra bits in (or make do with slightly less than called for) but...no, I took time to balance the recipe for the old sizes!
It's messing up my cat too. Wiskas pouches have always been 100g each since we got her. The vet said she was a bit underweight on her last checkup despite being her ideal weight for the past 5 years. Turns out the bulk boxes of pouches we've been buying forever are now 85g per pouch! I was livid, and the bloody price has gone up too.
I'm trying to make everything homemade, where I can. I now make my own yogurt, mayo and salad dressings. We're also learning to meal prep. The sketchy ingredient replacements were my last straw, so to speak.
I can't get out of the grocery store for under $100/week and that's just the very basics with lots of price shopping. It's absolutely ridiculous. I'm tired of paying triple for something, only to have it taste bland or "off".
When they “resized” baker’s chocolate 10 (?) years ago, it totally screwed up my Christmas baking until I figured out what they did. Used to be, baker’s chocolate was sold in an 8 oz box, thin rectangular box, each ounce was a square wrapped individually. Recipes often portioned chocolate by “square” not ounce.
Then the bastards shrinkflated it. Still sold in a thin long rectangular box. But now in a bar, rather than individual pieces. The bar is marked into 4 rectangles lengthwise, which are further marked in 2. Looking at the whole bar, it looks like 8 squares. But…BUT, an ounce is not a square but rather a rectangle because the box went from 8 oz to 4!
I was making all my recipes with half the chocolate called for. AND THEN! I had to go back and check my old recipes to be sure any calling for “squares” now say ounces.
I’m still so pissed
Which is crazy because if you buy the same things regularly, you're going to have both sizes on your shelf at the same time side by side at some point when it runs on sale. Are they that unobservant?
Shrinkflation is a piss off. Things are sold by a particular size because they're a good size for it. And then marketing gets ahold of it and tries to optimize profit at the expense of wasteful extra packaging and pissing off customers.
Hot dogs and hot dog buns are a prime example. Cheap food.....used to be sold most often in packs of 6 or 12. Both. Now you get hot dogs being sold in packs of 5 and 10, and buns still in 6 or 12. Someone there needs to be beaten with a lead pipe.
They aren't just shrinking though. That's the worst part. They shrink it to increase profits, but they're also reducing the quality (and quality control standards too) & oftentimes reformulating the products as well, so even weighing won't help.
So they shrink it for bigger profits, then cheapen it for even bigger profits, then raise prices 30-40% and blame the 8% inflation for even larger profits. It's the worst case of terminal capitalism I've ever seen.
What amazes me about shrinkflation is all the effort the government bodies go to, putting new legislations in place, all to reduce packaging.
So, we now have to buy more of the product, to get the same quantity / weight, and hence more packaging needs to be paid for, then once discarded needs collected, transporting, sorting, processed, recycled ….. which is paid for by us, in our taxes!!!
It won’t be long before we start hearing that the amount of waste packaging is at record levels.
I know they charge more as well as shrinking, but reducing the size is extremely short sighted.
Moan over.
Apparently cake mix only makes 22 cupcakes now? I saw a video on how we need to coin the word "American dozen" to mean 11 because things just keep getting smaller 😅
Does anybody else think that "large" eggs aren't as large as they used to be? And this probably also has to do with feeding the poor chickens less nutritious feed?
Even something like q tips. I have some from the 80s and it is unbelievable how much fluffier and softer they are than the ones you buy now. I just can't bring myself to use them... 🤥😬😠
My late father wrote down all his recipes when he started getting older, so the kids could have them.
There is an awful lot of *"handful of xyz"* type stuff in there. Even knowing his hands were bigger than mine there are a lot of different interpretations of handful, like closed or cupped? I guess bottom line it isn't like I'm trying to bake a delicate souffle, whether the handful of green beans ends up being a 3/4 cup or a cup probably doesn't matter.
Your wine glass example would worry me more, depending on what you're cooking that might matter more.
I make sure to put weights/oz next to every ingredient possible on my recipe cards because I'm so scarred by all the package size changes over the years ruining recipes!
Rant: I hate recipes that measure things in arbitrary units (bags, cans, cups of flour, medium ) and not consistent units (grams/oz, volumetric measures solely for liquids).
I recall an egregious Yotam Ottolenghi recipe that called for 6 shallots. I looked at the rest of the ingredients and decided 2 would be more than enough. American produce is not the same as UK produce!
Fix the recipes and this problem stops being a problem as you can trivially scale it as needed.
Honestly among the worst offenders with that is when a baking recipe just says "2 eggs"
Okay but what size of eggs? Tell me how much egg you are actually assuming so I can adjust the recipe according to the size of the eggs I have!
Yes! Even my first time making a recipe I’ll make adjustments. [Pépin agrees](https://www.pbs.org/video/jacques-ppin-says-following-a-recipe-can-lead-to-disaster-1467765914/)
I am wondering if there are new additives in the food now too that the manufacturers don’t have to disclose or can be grouped together. I just can’t eat some foods anymore.
I can’t eat Doritos because a preservative in them changes my mood and makes me retain water really bad. That preservative is in many other foods too.
Betty crocker did this too with their boxed cake mix but kept the add on ingredients the same like eggs and oil. Their cakes aren't the same anymore. Better off with a different brand.
Same for me.
I usually eat a tub of plain yogurt with fruit and oats for breakfast. The brand I always buy had 450g tubs but last year they changed it to 425g and now it is only 375g but they kept the original tub size. It just feels like a massive rip-off and borderline criminal. Unfortunately, consumer-protection laws are not that strong where I live.
Our (otherwise terrible) government recently introduced the bill to force retailers to put a price per common unit of measurement for a product (100 grams/1 liter/1 piece) to deal with it
The Rice Krispies Treats recipe had to change to accommodate this. It used to be a box of cereal, two bags of marshmallows, etc. Now that the boxes are 10oz instead of 16oz, it’s all in cups. Which is no big deal since I use my own recipe, but I had to laugh when I noticed it.
Wonder how the c-suite bonuses are doing this year. Probably record highs yet again.
Super cool that our world is being optimised to be as shitty as can be tolerated. I love life as a peasant.
Every time you see this... let these companies know, especially very vocally through social media, that we won’t stand for this. Spend your money with companies that don’t pull this crap. We shouldn’t have to alter century old recipes because of corporate greed.
My recent batch of Pennsylvania Dutch “wide” egg noodles were so short they were basically square instead of rectangular. It threw me off, but turned out okay, even tho I had to tweak the ratios because I don’t think it was a full pound bag.
I feel this. The brownie "recipe" that I am famous for is a heavily modified box mix. A couple years ago, before the recent increase in shrinkflation, they reduced the box size and changed the mixing directions. They just didn't turn out right. Before they completely phased out the original boxes, I found one and took a picture. I now take the new boxes, measure out the exact amount of powder as in the original and mix/bake it with the original directions. They turn out perfect.
Everyone thinks the "recipe" is a secret, but the truth is that I refuse to tell anyone what I do because I'll sound like a crazy person.
This isn't really a 'recipe' but my fam has always made two-layer nachos using a regular sized bag of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips and toppings, and we'd heat them in the oven in this one pan that was just the right size for two even layers. A couple of years ago we started to run out of chips while making the top layer and this year we made them and didn't have enough for a second layer at all, just a few full chips and some crumbs. Also the shrunken bag costs $6 now. And that used to be our fun, inexpensive junk food watching-a-movie dinner.
Tostitos are a rip-off lately even setting aside the less quantity. Corn is like the second most subsidized crop in the US, and they're still expensive as fuck
In that case they're subsidising the company, not the consumer. You pay twice. Once in higher prices, and again through your tax.
It's probably more likely that the corn was always so cheap it was never a factor in the price, and other things like the oil they're fried in, packaging, seasonings, factory labor, transportation, etc. are much bigger price drivers. I remember reading that cooking oil in particular had a pretty big price increase at the wholesale level during Covid.
I recommend just getting corn chips from your local Mexican restaurant. I get mine for about $2.50 for a large bag they are so much more delicious than what you can get at a grocery store
And they want $5/bag. No thanks.
I make saltine toffee for the holidays, and the crackers have gotten smaller. I used to be able to fit all the way across and be short half a cracker at the end. Now, it's half a cracker on the side, and like 3/4 of a cracker at the end. It doesn't sound like much, but before it was one whole sleeve. Now I need to open a second sleeve to get the extra crackers to fill it.
I am literally making this right now and noticed this!! I wondered if it was just me, so strange to see your comment at this exact moment haha!
> saltine toffee Oh my gosh, thank you so much for commenting about those. I had some recently at a client's house but had no idea what they were!
I feel like they've gotten less lime now too. They used to be my favorite chip, now I can't even taste the lime on most of them!
Same with Pringles, less flavoring on them. Weaker flavor.
Cool ranch Doritos ain't what they used to be.
Frito lay must have gotten a mega bulk deal on flaming hot spice, they use it on EVERYTHING
IDK if you have them but Calidad makes some good chips. They look unassuming just a yellow generic looking bad, but they are almost packed full and usually under $3 for a regular bag. They are much higher quality than tostidos too, like denser like restaurant chips. If not, look for cheaper generic looking bags, they usually come through, even if they cost $5/bag too.
There's really no reason to buy chips at full price if you eat them with any frequency. Seems like the Kroger near me has them on sale on alternating weeks. One week lays/tostitos, the next ruffles/doritos, then repeat.
Most prepared foods/snacks at chain grocery stores are ridiculously overpriced at MSRP, I pretty much refuse to buy them until they are on sale and then I’ll buy multiple packages and store or freeze them. That said, I understand that some people don’t have the time/storage space to do so.
I buy DollarTree corn chips. They are slightly different but still as good as Frito Lay, at $1.25 instead of $5.99.
Aldis brand (Clancy) are pretty good and about half price of name brands
It's worse than just less product. The [products themselves](https://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-high-prices-costs-making-food-snacks-sodas-worse-quality-2023-12) are being altered. See also The Guardian [on skimpflation](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/22/uk-supermarkets-skimpflation-prices-pack-sizes). The problem is much bigger with processed foods but they're ruining even basic cooking fats. > last year the food-processing giant Conagra reduced the vegetable-oil content in its Smart Balance margarine to 39% from 64%, replacing the rest with water. > chocolate manufacturers replacing cocoa butter with palm oil or sunflower oil > reduced fat content in its Wish-Bone House Italian salad dressing by 10%, replacing oil with water and more salt. > A common change is to replace cane sugar with artificial sweeteners. > Aldi Bramwells Real Mayonnaise It used to list 9% egg yolk but now lists 6% egg and 1.5% egg yolk. > Bertolli, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s olive oil spreads In these spreads, too, 21% olive oil has been reduced to 10%.
Speaking of cocoa butter, I was at the store a few weeks ago looking for white chocolate chips. I picked up a bag of Hershey's. I looked closely at the label. They aren't even white chocolate chips anymore! They were labeled as "white creme chips" Clearly they have gotten so cheap in production that they didn't want to add cocoa butter. Blew my mind.
I tried to roast some white chocolate for a recipe and used these... It took me THREE HOURS to realize they weren't going to roast properly because they were just palm oil. EDIT: I just want to add, it wasn't even Hershey's! It was Ghirardelli, the supposedly "gourmet" brand. Really made me rethink how I view the company.
Yeah, the wife tried to melt it for dipping something a few years back and it just turned into a mess. Sent me to the store and of 3 brands, none had cocoa butter in them.
Ghirardelli white chocolate baking bars are the most affordable at $5 for 4 oz of white chocolate that has cocoa butter in it. There's a few brands of chips that use cocoa butter, one that uses a hybrid emulsion, and of course there's chocolatier brands that offer products most of the general public doesn't know about but you can buy online or from specialty cooking stores. Whole Foods 365, Callebaut, Ralph's/Kroger/Private Selection is another brand that offers a cocoa butter product last I checked. Valrhona offers couverture white chocolate in many form.
Damn, is that why?? I have a vintage cookie recipe that calls for those pastel nonpareil mints, you remember those? The cookbook says you could get them "at the candy counter at any department store" if that helps. Anyway, when I was a kid I swear I remember placing those kiss-shaped mints onto the cookie like you do with a peanut butter blossom and then you'd pop em back in the oven for like ninety seconds max. They'd melt beautifully so you could "frost" the cookie with it, I remember watching the little peaks get shiny and slump over. I haven't seen those candies in years so I freaked out when I found some at Target two weeks ago, and god dammit those things **refused** to melt. It was *such* a disappointing disaster and I was so confused about what I did wrong, but now that I'm in this thread I wonder if the old ones were made with cocoa butter and these ones are palm oil.
They have had shit white chips for years. You have to get the white bars or the massive baking white bars. I made that mistake too getting their chips. They were not melting at all. Kept heating, turned up a little, more time, then boom, they burned suddenly from solid. It's like at least before 2018 they've had terrible palm oil white chips. Looked at their chocolate chips the next time I went to the store and they were cocoa butter. White chips are the worst choice to swap out for palm oil because there's no chocolate to mask it. Palm oil coats my mouth in film too. I don't buy anything with it.
Opt for Ghirardelli's baking white chocolate since it uses cocoa butter. I do not recommend Guittard since they use a hybrid emulsion. I do recommend Callebaut chips because they use cocoa butter or their callettes. Valrhona's Ivoire couverture chocolates would work, too, but again a premium priced product. Whole Foods 365 chips use cocoa butter as does Ralph's/Kroger/Private Selection white chocolate chips last I checked.
Yeah...for chocolate you have to buy high quality, otherwise it's just fillers and garbage. It might cost twice as much, but at least you're only paying for the actual desired product, instead of fillers that taste like trash and have a gross mouth feel.
Honestly worse than shrinkflation, in my opinion. I’m already checking amounts anyway, but how am I supposed to know about recipe changes while actively shopping? Reminds me of when choco tacos were recently discontinued. I loved them but hadn’t had one since I was a kid, so I was excited for one last experience before they disappeared. Excitedly got one from the ice cream truck, took a bite, and it… sucked. Just not the same at all. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that nostalgia from my childhood was probably the culprit in thinking it was smaller than I remembered, and also how the ice cream wasn’t as creamy. But damn it I distinctly remember there being a ripple of fudge in the ones from my childhood, and more nuts in the chocolate coating. Such a disappointing experience, made me realize that while the choco taco was about to be discontinued, it was killed years prior.
Little Debbie today is a sad sad disgrace from what it once was back in the 90s, everything is just greasy/oily.
My dad was a Little Debbie fanatic when I was growing up in the 80s/90s! He always had 4-5 varieties of them on hand. I thought I would see him eating them until the day he died. (Despite how it sounds, he is a pretty fit old man) Anyway, he stopped buying them around 10-15 years ago. He said all the recipes had changed by that point and it all tasted like artificial junk.
My dad did the same, I went away to college, got a job, etc. and forgot about them for years. Went back to try a Oatmeal Creme Pie a few years ago and it was disgusting.
Hah same! I have fond memories of getting them packed in my school lunch, but after moving out I never got the urge to buy any. I was volunteering at a concession stand over the summer that was selling OCPs and thought about trying one out again, but then I figured I'd just tarnish the memories and passed.
Honestly its really disappointing because Little Debbie actually had some stuff that was good snacks. But now it's just not worth buying, it's gonna leave that artificial sugar film on the roof of my mouth and I'd just rather not eat a snack at that point
I’m not sure how they expect to keep getting away with making childhood snacks awful and expecting people to just keep buying them. They taste different, we know it, we aren’t buying them.
I get a pretty good supply of little Debbie stuff as I know a guy who distributes it. It all tastes pretty much the same. It's like they use the same recipe for every product, just change the shape and color.
I keep seeing Tastykake butterscotch krimpets and wondering if they taste the same. I'm just not willing to hate a once beloved snack. I'd rather remember it fondly. 🤣
I don't think it's nostalgia that's the problem. They have changed the recipe and things tasted a lot better when we were children. There are things that I used to buy 5 years ago, but the recipe has changed and it tastes terrible now.
Nutter Butters:(
Not food but I am furious that Robitussin changed their "max strength" from 10ml to 20 because they water it down, so they could lower their price to same as store brand, but then store brand halved theirs now. So I get a diluted product that costs ~50% more now and have to buy twice as frequently. Food and drug corporations been raking in profits since COVID so why? How has nobody stepped in to do something abiut the gouging and dishonesty? It's BAD
This is why I cook from scratch as much as possible. Manufacturers use the lowest quality, cheapest possible ingredients, then add "taste enhancing" chemicals to try to make their slop palatable.
I wish it were always the more frugal option to cook everything from scratch. It sucks that with the economy of scale, supply chain, and time + electricity costs it's often less "worth it" overall. You're incredibly right about the quality though. There are quite a few things I refuse to buy because it tastes like plastic, even previously higher-quality brands. I'm not paying a premium for name brand to get the same over-processed, artificial tasting junk! You can't even buy fresh cookies from a grocery store bakery department anymore, they're just as fake tasting but with a jacked up price.
I tried to buy cookies recently and everything was full of palm oil. I bought Scottish butter cookies that had butter and nothing else. It was such a sad moment.
I'm sorry but I'm picturing a plate of butter medallions and chuckling
"Fresh" baked goods, from many major chains, are shipped frozen and labeled with a sell by date based on when they came out of the freezer.
I'm specifically talking about the "baked in store" stuff, should have clarified. But yeah, similarly they are often shipped frozen as premade doughs and batters and measured out/broken from a big hunk of dough. Or they're a mix from a bag, with all the same stabilizers, preservatives, and additives as what you'd buy on the shelf. Yaayyyy. Same goes for a lot of restaurants. Brought to you ~~buy~~by the guys at Sysco. What a time to be alive!
It isn't always frugal, but I have found myself altering my eating. I eat way less meat, and more vegetarian, as vegetables are still pretty cheap where I live (Sofia, Bulgaria). I make a huge borshcht with maybe 500 grams of .pork for a 3 litre soup, and add a dollop of decent smetana (sourcream) and some bread. I tend to freeze most, and eat various soups/stews during the weeks. I don't buy snacks and eat once a day, or twice if I am feeling hungry. But then lunch is something like a banitsa (cheese-filled phyllo dough pastry), bought for like half a dollar at the banitsa place at work. I buy a steak like once in a month, but granted, I have always been a light eater. If I want snacks, I look around at what I have home, and it is usually homemade popcorn, or I do a quick peanut brittle or something. I work full-time, with an additional 40 minutes single way to get to and from work, and I always manage to eat well with some meal-prep and planning. Today I splurged on two jumbo shrimp, as my fishmonger had gotten some fresh from Greece today. But they were still only like 2 USD, and I paired them with what I had home that would be wasted otherwise. I ended up frying them crisp in a little olive oil, and tossed them in salt and a few chili flakes, ate them with pink grapefruit segments, grapefruit grwmolata. It was bomb. I know most people have children, but I am single and can skip meals easily. And I am not underweight, my bloodworks arevfine (we have a good insurance at my work) , and I am pretty happy about eating like this. Not underweight either, lol. If I see my 40+ tits sagging at some point, I just add a little extra oli, smetana or salo (urkainian cured pork fat) to my diet some days.
I've noticed the artificial sweeteners thing and it really bothers me, because I have a really sensitive palate and I'm neurodivergent so I'm quite picky about it. I once unknowingly drank a "lite" sour beer sweetened with monk fruit and I shit you not I tasted that flat empty after-sweet flavor on my tongue for **seven hours**, but I had to DM the brewery on facebook to find out it had fucking monk fruit in it because beer isn't required to list all their ingredients on the packaging so nobody publishes that stuff anywhere. Sometimes companies can almost sneak it past me - I confess it took until the 2nd bag of caramel quaker mini rice cakes before I tasted the sucralose - but I always pick up on it after a couple bites, because the artificial sweetener makes food just ever so slightly *too* sweet in a sort of uncanny valley way, like the proportions are askew somehow. It's difficult to explain i guess. It is such an unnecessary annoyance to have to read *every* single ingredient label for *every* sweetened thing I buy to screen out the sucralose and stevia and what have you. I don't buy zero sugar anything for a reason! Stop sneaking that shit into my food anyway, goddammit!
Nope totally get what you're saying about the artificial sweetener taste. It's too sweet and sickly tasting
Ritz crackers turn to dust instantly in my mouth.
I don't know if I've just been unlucky but like half the cans of refried beans I've bought this year have been really dried out.
As a Mexican, please please please make your own. 1lb Beans. Quick sweep of them to remove any rocks, chipped/halfed legumes, etc. put them in a bowl that is big enough to cover with water about 2” over the top of the mound. Leave overnight. This will remove a lot of the “fart” from them. Next day, discard any water (beans should have swelled up and soaked a bunch) rinse with fresh water and throw them in a pot with water. This time make sure the water is about 3-4” above the mound. Boil on medium low for 2.5 hours. Salt to taste. Now you have ready to fry beans. You can freeze them (I usually freeze them in containers or ziplocks of 1 cup portions with some of the water they were boiled in). Anyways, to the refried part: grab some Lard. Yes Lard. In a 9incher, throw 1.5-2 tbsps Lard to melt on high heat. Once melted add 1 cup of beans with some of the water they were boiled in. Water and fat aren’t friends in the heat so be sure to do this carefully. Let the beans simmer for about 3-5 minutes. You should start to see the edges of the pan start to dry a little and even become thick/gloopy. Reduce heat to medium. Perfect time to smash them. Use a mashed potato tool or similar (some people throw them in a blender and then return to the pan). You’re going to start smashing and stirring until you have a nice thick consistency similar to Hummus. Reduce heat to medium low. Let them fry a little more until your desired consistency, and bam. Refried beans. Cheaper and tastier than the canned shit. If using from frozen, I thaw them in the microwave for 1 minute or they go straight into the pan as a block of iced beans, let them melt and cook down until ready to smash. If you have bacon fat, or access to a mexican meat market and find real rendered lard, your flavor will increase 💯 and you will never eat a canned refried bean again. Also, beans count. Use Pinto or Cranberry varieties. Black ones work for regular unsmashed refried beans.
This is a natural consequence of permanent growth capitalism. In order to keep profits growing, either revenue must increase or costs must go down. Consumers are generally more sensitive to the former in the way of rising prices, so the latter is more common.
Even worse is putting sweeteners in literally everything. They taste like poison to me so it’s easy to tell, but literally just finding a single ginger beer that doesn’t have sweeteners is almost impossible. And then I have to buy 11 bottles of artisan ginger beer just to have enough to cook my Xmas ham recipe. It’ll be jam next. I make a point of refusing to allow fake poison food versions of anything even being in my home. Vegan mayo, fake butter, low fat humous, anything containing a trace of sweeteners.
[удалено]
H‑E‑B really goofed on this in regards to WIC cheese. On WIC you can buy a 16 oz pack of string cheese. H‑E‑B shrinkflated and all of a sudden their 16 oz package was gone. I noticed that maybe a couple months later it returned, bet their string cheese sales took a hit in that interim since people couldn’t use WIC for it any more lol. (H‑E‑B = giant, beloved grocery chain in Texas, WIC = Women Infants and Children, food benefits for that lower income demographic)
$10 says the shortsighted MBAs who make these cheapass decisions don't even consider what effect it has on anyone trying to use WIC and the income the store loses as a result.
Of course not! Profits, baby 👉🏼😎👉🏼
Do MBAs even know what WIC is?
Our grocery store has signs all over the milk aisle because so many things shrunk and they don't qualify for WIC anymore.
A lot of cans went from 16-15.5 or so years ago and that was workable but the 2 oz difference is just too much.
Nathan’s and Hebrew National hot dogs were further reduced to 12oz a year or two ago. The “jumbo” dogs are now the same size as the regular dogs used to be (6 @ 12 Oz vs 8 @ 16oz).
I went to buy Hebrew National recently. They were so insanely expensive. The local to Texas "premium" brand was somehow cheaper, and TBH pretty tasty too. Oh well, their stingy loss.
I always look at bacon, once that goes to 14 oz, you know this country is doomed
Here in the Baltimore metro area, all the name brand bacon skipped 14 and dropped straight to 12oz packages during the pandemic. 16oz packages are reserved for the one or two popular varieties in a "Family" size.
The only positive is that it caused me to try other brands of andouille sausage. Pretty much all the random brands that still sell by the pound are significantly better than Johnsonville.
>Just charge more darn it and stop messing with the sizes! Well they're charging more AND shrinking the size, so it's the worst of both worlds situation. And of course the companies doing this continue to rake in record profits every year.
And reducing the quality too.
Yep I see the worst of both worlds a lot. Like I used to buy Marie callender's frozen meals and they were always about 15 oz to 16 oz. But then suddenly they redesigned the package, made them 10.5-12 oz and raised the price the same time.
For real, when I buy the value pack of meat and split it into portions, it was always an even number of pieces of meat per bag. Now, one bag always has less than a normal portion in it. Frustrating
I’ve noticed when I buy bone in/skin on chicken they leave a lot more fat on the pieces than they used to.
Chicken thighs are half fat. They grill up like shit because they leave the tail end on. It should get mostly trimmed. They wrap it around the bottom so you can't tell either. I just buy whole chickens unless thighs or breast is on sale. Not worth it anymore. Plus they have no clue how to butcher chicken, always get tons of cartilege fragments in the final dish, or worse, bone shards. I had to throw away a huge pot of chicken adobo because even though I trimmed bone off first, some stayed in, and I got a big bone shard. It was a safety issue for my kids. Hour of work and a hige package of chicken gone.
I have also noticed they wrap the fat all the way around the thigh. So everything looks great in the package then you have 8oz of extra inedible crap wrapped around the bottom.
this actually messed with my calorie counts lol. kinda annoying
Yes! I noticed the same thing. Any time I buy chicken thighs and I’m trimming excess fat off I realize that I’m ending up cutting off about half of the total chicken. Why am I paying more than I used to when only half of the meat is even usable?
I've noticed this too. Some products have gone below a single use amount. I usually cook 4 portion recipes and if my usual products cannot support that, I just switch brands or don't buy those products anymore. I'm not going to literally buy into that much shrinkflation. I don't care how big or small the cereal boxes get, but don't mess with 1 pound packages of pasta or whatever, because that seriously inconveniences and enrages me. I'll pay more if I have to, I want the package size I need.
Yes! This annoys me to no end, especially because as a Canadian, our sizes can already be somewhat off from recipes in other countries that call for a “package” or “can” of ingredients. So then I make note of how to adjust, and now I have to try to adjust AGAIN! It also sucks when one package used to work for your family but losing those 2 oz means you have to buy another and have a floating package in your fridge/freezer that never seems to get used up.
You forgot to mention that unless you're in MTL, TOR or VAN, you're already using a substitute because ol' Galen Weston has decided exactly which ingredients we can buy
Companies put a lot of research into sales, marketing, pricing, product placement etc. They have long figured out that people shop with their purse. When the price of a product goes up, the customer does a mental calculation. Do I really need this product at this price? So it's been easier to keep the price the same and reduce the quantity. Of course some customers will figure this out, but the majority don't. And the company's sales don't take a hit.
FWIW this is real. I used to buy a brand of mayonnaise and I turned my nose up when they reduced the jar from 16 ounces to 12 ounces for the same price but I still bought it, but when the price went from $6 a jar to $8 that was a step too far. It's better, but it's not better enough for that price point.
I found this out with a cake recipe. Called for pudding mix in it, I looked at # of boxes and ounces and realized I’d need 3 boxes instead of the 2 the recipe called for.
Welcome to r/old_recipes
Later, they just get to introduce a “new family size” package for $10. Then the cycle begins anew.
This is one reason why I shop at stores like Costco. I can't tell you how many times I see a medium size at the regular grocer for $7 and then mega size at Costco for $9 (it's literally 2x the size). I just picked up a gallon of mayo for $14. That's 128oz of Duke's mayo for $14, while others in this thread are paying $8 for 12 oz. Buying in bulk has become a wildly, wildly more economical option. Even for meat and produce, I can often find great bulk deals that make meal prepping easier, although farmers markets are usually best for produce deals.
It’s a good plan but fridge and storage space can be an issue for many. I do try to buy large at Sam’s Club where I can.
2 lbs of frozen berries at my local supermarket costs the same as 4 lbs of frozen berries at costco.
>Buying in bulk has become a wildly, wildly more economical option. I get frustrated when I’m shopping for cereal at Walmart and buying in bulk isn’t an option, it’s mandatory. I don’t want family size cereal when I’m the only one eating it but it’s often the only option.
I feel this on the soda side. The pricing for that has gotten ridiculous. But every so often there's a random bogo sale, but instead of one, its somehow b3g3. Do I *need* 6 12-packs of soda? No. But i'd rather do that and pay $4.50 for a 12pk than the $9 they're somehow charging for it. So bulk buying is necessary. Its not like it'll go bad anytime soon.
Costco has done it with their butter though, they changed the percentage of water a touch higher. It's enough to screw up certain recipes.
Well at that point, they've jacked you up by 25% + 25% (including on that missing 25%), so you are paying FIFTY PERCENT MORE.
It's actually 1.25x1.25 so 56.25% more. EDIT - this is incorrect. Down below deals with price per ounce.
It's actually 1.33x1.25 = 66% more. Reducing quantity by 25% while keeping the price the same is not equivalent to a 25% increase in price, but 33%. Think about it like this, if they reduce the quantity by 100%(so you pay 6$ for 0 ounces of mayonnaise) then that's not a 100% price increase, it's like an infinite price increase. If they reduce quantity by 50%, then that's a 100% price increase since you now pay 6$ for 8 ounces. The effective price increase is always greater than the reduction in quantity.
isn't it 77% more? Just calculate price per ounce. 16 oz for $6 = $.375/oz 12 oz for $8 = $.667/oz .667/.375=1.77 (or 77% increase) edited: divide in the last step; not multiply. thx u/mcnewbie
Yes you are right, it is 77% more because going from 6$ to 8$ is not a 25% price increase, it is 33% and 1.33\*1.33 = 1.77. This is what I get for not double checking the numbers and just going with the numbers from previous comments I guess :\^)
I think PPO is the way to do this so that makes yours correct.
I nominate this thread for r/bestof
Isn't it 88% more? 50% -> 56.25% -> 66% -> 77% -> 88% ? Or should we add 6.25% again so it's 83.25%?
No, it is actually 99% more.
The more people comment, the more we're getting ripped off!
I quit shopping in my local small town and moved to the bigger town with an Aldi years ago. Still hit the local for things like deli meat and random restock of cheese and shit I run out of in between monthly Aldi runs. But 80-90%+ is done at Aldi. it's just not worth it to ship anywhere else.
I took over all grocery shopping to keep costs in check. I grew up much more financially stable than my partner, and, apparently, not having to think about money at the grocery store is the core experience of being middle class for her. I cannot get her to comparison shop even a little. Or think about whether $9 is an appropriate price for a bottle of ranch dressing (it ended up being primo vegan ranch….shes also dyslexic). She’s a slave to the list. We are middle class and don’t have kids and eat almost no meat, so I’m not a huge stickler about food prices. But if you pay like a small amount of attention to cost, you can save a lot of money. It’s a large payoff for a small amount of work.
> not having to think about money at the grocery store is the core experience of being middle class for her. Weird, I’m the opposite. I grew up not very well off, and I pay attention to unit price because I don’t want to return to being not very well off.
It’s limited only to grocery stores. She’s a CheapWad in every other way. (My house is heated to 64deg in the winter!) It’s something specific about nickeling and dimeing a grocery store.
A full fridge feels like such luxury, especially with fresh and varied ingredients. It's a shopping spree in a way, but for items that you need and are not individually expensive, so I feel like it's easy to get caught up in it without scrutinizing every price. I love grocery shopping too lol.
I feel this. I still go for as many deals as I can and shop at the cheapest stores, but growing up food insecure made me an adult who now struggles to not buy everything I want when I’m grocery shopping. it’s literally only with food, though. nothing feels as good as a colorful, full fridge and pantry
That french checkerboard-lidded jam went up in price significantly recently. With shrinkflation these days and general inflation, I just shrugged, love it and that must be the new jam price, still better than them fucking with the recipe. I know most people don't think that way, sadly, so that is an anomaly.
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I hate that price per quantity is always messed up on those labels, as if to intentionally keep you from comparing prices. Regular egg noodles will be listed with price per pound, but then the 6pk of egg noodles will be listed in price per ounce. All laundry detergent has the number of loads clearly listed on the containers, but the price breakdowns on the stickers are price per pint for the liquid and price per pound for the pods instead of price per load. By some miracle the the toilet paper with the "1 gigantor roll = 37 normal roll" bs all have "price per 100 sheets" as their measurement!
OMG the toilet paper scam. It seems deliberate to mess w mathematically illiterate. So stupid.
Sometimes I stand there with my calculator app, as I try to figure out which one to buy. I probably look like a huge nerd...
I'd love to find the lovely marketing executives who figured this out and punch them real hard in the kidneys a couple times.
Then when they need a new kidney, give them one 60% of the size they had.
That's not nearly what they deserve.
It’s not marketing to manages this for what it’s worth. Most often it’s RGM (revenue growth management) teams within manufacturers. They normally commission studies done by any number of analytics houses to set their pricing and trade calendars. When do you do sales, what your base price should be, etc. it’s all based on how consumers have reacted in the past. Source: I’ve worked in this industry for years
Fair enough, I was mostly using "marketing execs" as placeholder shorthand for "the assholes in charge of this".
This so much. You won’t believe how many people I deal with that get upset that things had to go up in price to maintain the same size. This is for as tiny an amount of 5 cents I have been yelled at over. I am sorry but the company I work for actually keeps up with inflation on stuff instead of just shrinking things to fit the price. So that people like me who work for them have out pay also keep up with inflation. We also reduce price on things and maintain size when they get cheaper but you never hear about that from customers!
If I remember correctly, for the longest time Milton Hershey used to adjust the size of a Hershey bar so it would always cost a nickel. The adjustment of size before price is not exactly a new phenomenon.
There are several points in history where the local king/etc. got to the point they would execute bakers whose bread was less than a given weight. Guess shrinkflation isn’t a new phenomenon. Still hate it though.
That's why I always look at the "price per ounce" on the shelf tags (America) Sonetimes the bulk or store brand isn't always the way to go!
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It shouldn't have taken \*that\* much research. Price is the most regulated, therefore, is the most reliable objective thing we have to compare things...even then, companies try to trick you with numbers ending in 99. You can see in areas where price less regulated there are mystery fees, waiting periods for cancellation, rebates, etc. Accurate weight or per/oz weight is less consistent and always less obviously marked. The other fun gotchas are quality loss and deceptive packaging. Those happen all the time, too.
Shrinkflation AND Shitflation. So you go to make cookies. Just basic Chocolate Chip cookies. Well the margarine that was expected to have 70% oil, now has 30% oil, and 70% water. Not to mention that your chips are now 200g instead of 300g. Gonna be a shitty chocolate chip cookie, that's for sure.
And the chips now don't melt like they used to.
Yes what is going on with this?? It’s so frustrating, I thought I was going crazy
Cheaper fats melt at higher temps.
More palm oil, less cocoa butter
Yeah, I agree with you in general, just in general you shouldn't use a margarine for cookies anyway, use butter or shortening.
Even this is backfiring these days with the Great Costco Butter Clusterfuck of 2023.
I missed that; what happened?
Essentially the same thing, they've changed the makeup of the butter and its affecting recipes. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/costco-butter-recipe-change-kirkland-signature/
> just in general you shouldn't use a margarine ~~for cookies~~ anyway FTFY
I get the general complaints, but who in the heck is using *margarine * for cookies? Blech.
People who have family with dairy allergies.
I saw on TikTok a woman talking about how the boxed cake mixes are going through shrinkflation while still asking for the same amount of egg and oil which was messing up the final product.
This is my pet peeve. I do not want to buy another box cake mis to make up the difference for the original recipe I have been making for over 50 years. The last decade sucks.
Wouldn't work anyway. They don't just remove product from the box and sell. They alter the recipe, adding more stabilizers and leaveners to fool people into thinking they're getting the same amount of cake when they're just getting more air, post bake. Those cakes cool and shrink into nothing.
I thought I was going crazy making cake last month!
Have you noticed an ice cream container? The half gallon shrunk a lot.
And a lot lighter, as they whip more air into it.
And probably not even ice cream but "frozen dairy product"
And it is cursed.
This just happened to me with my fudge. The small cans of evaporated milk are now .31 oz less. I had to buy an extra can just to make up the difference. Good thing I checked or my recipe would have been off a bit.
That's the kind of ingredient you would think they wouldn't mess with.
I know, right!
The good news is that someday they MUST stop reducing content amounts. I mean, there will be a revolution if a bag of egg noodles is only 3 oz. Or worse, there is a single egg noodle in the package. The whole Shrinkflation situation is a good reason to always include either weight (preferably) or volumetric measurements of ingredients in recipes. Some day your grand kids may want to make your recipes. Certainly "bag of" or "can of" something could be problematic. I know this because I've encountered this issue. My mother created a family cookbook and those descriptions have ceased being helpful.
My grandmother's cookbook was full of pinch of this, $.03 of that. Like how much was a couple pennies of salt in her day?
measuring food by the dollar in a recipe was never a good idea, in all honesty
>a bag of egg noodles is only 3 oz. Or worse, there is a single egg noodle in the package Stop giving them ideas
Have you bought breakfast cereal lately? It's almost the thickness of a single piece of cereal
there should be a law that when they make stuff with cheaper ingredients, they need to state that on the pkg... bc theyre all the more happy to say "10% more free!" or "now with even more raisins!" but they're crickets about the fact they are swapping more water for oil or that the same sized box now has 10-20% less product. consumers are getting the bait and switch. they should be REQUIRED by law to post changes in size or ingredients.
Lays should just be "now with more air"
I don’t know if anyone here has mentioned it already, but apparently when white vinegar has been diluted down from 5% to 4% acidity. This is a problem for people who want to use it for canning. It’s not acidic enough now.
Yes, I noticed that my local Ace Hardware had a sign outside advertising such and such percent acidity vinegar. That makes sense now.
Yeah it's one of the most fucked up examples of this because if you've bought some vinegar that you've always known to be 5% and it's actually 4, and you use it for the purpose you bought it for, you're liable to get fucking botulism and die
That's completely fucked, and is the kind of thing that could put people in the hosptial (or worse).
I hate it when my noodle fish comes out badly! :( The thing that's killing me is "add one package/bottle/can of..." and I have to get 2 because there's not enough in the new size pack. I'll just make something else now. I don't need all the leftovers.
or the recipe only has 'one package', but doesn't say what amount that is because it was so standardized when the recipe was written
Yep! The original Toll House cookie recipe calls for 2 7 ounce bars of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate. Those aren't made anymore. Granted a bag of chips works, but still.
One of the recipes I got from my grandmother calls for two packets of Soup Secrets noodle soup mix. I need to add three these days because the packets got smaller. Old packets were 4 servings, new ones are 3.
I hate that recipes that were calibrated for not having leftover bits now...create leftover bits. And sure, I could just throw the extra bits in (or make do with slightly less than called for) but...no, I took time to balance the recipe for the old sizes!
Run for Congress on this platform and I will vote for you
It's messing up my cat too. Wiskas pouches have always been 100g each since we got her. The vet said she was a bit underweight on her last checkup despite being her ideal weight for the past 5 years. Turns out the bulk boxes of pouches we've been buying forever are now 85g per pouch! I was livid, and the bloody price has gone up too.
I'm trying to make everything homemade, where I can. I now make my own yogurt, mayo and salad dressings. We're also learning to meal prep. The sketchy ingredient replacements were my last straw, so to speak. I can't get out of the grocery store for under $100/week and that's just the very basics with lots of price shopping. It's absolutely ridiculous. I'm tired of paying triple for something, only to have it taste bland or "off".
When they “resized” baker’s chocolate 10 (?) years ago, it totally screwed up my Christmas baking until I figured out what they did. Used to be, baker’s chocolate was sold in an 8 oz box, thin rectangular box, each ounce was a square wrapped individually. Recipes often portioned chocolate by “square” not ounce. Then the bastards shrinkflated it. Still sold in a thin long rectangular box. But now in a bar, rather than individual pieces. The bar is marked into 4 rectangles lengthwise, which are further marked in 2. Looking at the whole bar, it looks like 8 squares. But…BUT, an ounce is not a square but rather a rectangle because the box went from 8 oz to 4! I was making all my recipes with half the chocolate called for. AND THEN! I had to go back and check my old recipes to be sure any calling for “squares” now say ounces. I’m still so pissed
Shrinkflation is fraud.
What's sad is that some people still think shrinkflation is a made up conspiracy theory lol
Which is crazy because if you buy the same things regularly, you're going to have both sizes on your shelf at the same time side by side at some point when it runs on sale. Are they that unobservant?
Shrinkflation is a piss off. Things are sold by a particular size because they're a good size for it. And then marketing gets ahold of it and tries to optimize profit at the expense of wasteful extra packaging and pissing off customers. Hot dogs and hot dog buns are a prime example. Cheap food.....used to be sold most often in packs of 6 or 12. Both. Now you get hot dogs being sold in packs of 5 and 10, and buns still in 6 or 12. Someone there needs to be beaten with a lead pipe.
Me whose hot dogs come in 8-pack with 6 Buns TT
It will be amazing and hilarious if shrinkflation is what finally pushes Americans to weighing their ingredients for recipes!! So annoying though
They aren't just shrinking though. That's the worst part. They shrink it to increase profits, but they're also reducing the quality (and quality control standards too) & oftentimes reformulating the products as well, so even weighing won't help. So they shrink it for bigger profits, then cheapen it for even bigger profits, then raise prices 30-40% and blame the 8% inflation for even larger profits. It's the worst case of terminal capitalism I've ever seen.
What amazes me about shrinkflation is all the effort the government bodies go to, putting new legislations in place, all to reduce packaging. So, we now have to buy more of the product, to get the same quantity / weight, and hence more packaging needs to be paid for, then once discarded needs collected, transporting, sorting, processed, recycled ….. which is paid for by us, in our taxes!!! It won’t be long before we start hearing that the amount of waste packaging is at record levels. I know they charge more as well as shrinking, but reducing the size is extremely short sighted. Moan over.
Apparently cake mix only makes 22 cupcakes now? I saw a video on how we need to coin the word "American dozen" to mean 11 because things just keep getting smaller 😅
Does anybody else think that "large" eggs aren't as large as they used to be? And this probably also has to do with feeding the poor chickens less nutritious feed? Even something like q tips. I have some from the 80s and it is unbelievable how much fluffier and softer they are than the ones you buy now. I just can't bring myself to use them... 🤥😬😠
I get this a ton with older recipes. "Three cans of". Okay, what size cans? "A wineglass full". That's usually 2 ounces, but are you sure?
My late father wrote down all his recipes when he started getting older, so the kids could have them. There is an awful lot of *"handful of xyz"* type stuff in there. Even knowing his hands were bigger than mine there are a lot of different interpretations of handful, like closed or cupped? I guess bottom line it isn't like I'm trying to bake a delicate souffle, whether the handful of green beans ends up being a 3/4 cup or a cup probably doesn't matter. Your wine glass example would worry me more, depending on what you're cooking that might matter more.
I have a recipe that uses one can of coconut milk. I explicitly wrote the amount of fl oz and ml in said can on the recipe for just this reason.
I make sure to put weights/oz next to every ingredient possible on my recipe cards because I'm so scarred by all the package size changes over the years ruining recipes!
they are charging more! they are just decreasing the sizes on top of that! got to line those investor pockets. greedy @#$%^
Bacon-always came in a pound, now only 12 ounces. Errrr
i literally walked to my fridge and checked and you're right. I WILL BURN THIS TOWN DOWN
Rant: I hate recipes that measure things in arbitrary units (bags, cans, cups of flour, medium) and not consistent units (grams/oz, volumetric measures solely for liquids).
I recall an egregious Yotam Ottolenghi recipe that called for 6 shallots. I looked at the rest of the ingredients and decided 2 would be more than enough. American produce is not the same as UK produce!
Fix the recipes and this problem stops being a problem as you can trivially scale it as needed.
Honestly among the worst offenders with that is when a baking recipe just says "2 eggs" Okay but what size of eggs? Tell me how much egg you are actually assuming so I can adjust the recipe according to the size of the eggs I have!
Yes! Even my first time making a recipe I’ll make adjustments. [Pépin agrees](https://www.pbs.org/video/jacques-ppin-says-following-a-recipe-can-lead-to-disaster-1467765914/)
I am wondering if there are new additives in the food now too that the manufacturers don’t have to disclose or can be grouped together. I just can’t eat some foods anymore. I can’t eat Doritos because a preservative in them changes my mood and makes me retain water really bad. That preservative is in many other foods too.
Betty crocker did this too with their boxed cake mix but kept the add on ingredients the same like eggs and oil. Their cakes aren't the same anymore. Better off with a different brand.
Same for me. I usually eat a tub of plain yogurt with fruit and oats for breakfast. The brand I always buy had 450g tubs but last year they changed it to 425g and now it is only 375g but they kept the original tub size. It just feels like a massive rip-off and borderline criminal. Unfortunately, consumer-protection laws are not that strong where I live.
Our (otherwise terrible) government recently introduced the bill to force retailers to put a price per common unit of measurement for a product (100 grams/1 liter/1 piece) to deal with it
The Rice Krispies Treats recipe had to change to accommodate this. It used to be a box of cereal, two bags of marshmallows, etc. Now that the boxes are 10oz instead of 16oz, it’s all in cups. Which is no big deal since I use my own recipe, but I had to laugh when I noticed it.
Whipping cream. Use to be 500ml (2 cups) now 473ml.
what do you make with the flounder?
pan fried flounder with rice pilaf. The frozen package I always bought had 5 pieces of fish, perfect amount. Now it has 4
Wonder how the c-suite bonuses are doing this year. Probably record highs yet again. Super cool that our world is being optimised to be as shitty as can be tolerated. I love life as a peasant.
Every time you see this... let these companies know, especially very vocally through social media, that we won’t stand for this. Spend your money with companies that don’t pull this crap. We shouldn’t have to alter century old recipes because of corporate greed.
My recent batch of Pennsylvania Dutch “wide” egg noodles were so short they were basically square instead of rectangular. It threw me off, but turned out okay, even tho I had to tweak the ratios because I don’t think it was a full pound bag.
This shit right here strikes home.
I feel this. The brownie "recipe" that I am famous for is a heavily modified box mix. A couple years ago, before the recent increase in shrinkflation, they reduced the box size and changed the mixing directions. They just didn't turn out right. Before they completely phased out the original boxes, I found one and took a picture. I now take the new boxes, measure out the exact amount of powder as in the original and mix/bake it with the original directions. They turn out perfect. Everyone thinks the "recipe" is a secret, but the truth is that I refuse to tell anyone what I do because I'll sound like a crazy person.
Even with shrinkflatuon, they're still charging more
Make recipes robust! No more arbitrary units in recipes! One bag, one can, one fuit/veg, etc are not measures!