Shrinkflation Tracker

https://www.shrinkflation.io/

by samlader • 3 years ago

334 230 3 years ago

Great idea! I'm afraid this would require at least a hundred employees to keep it current and useful, though. But, as a society, we definitely need this. Maybe if some government agency could back it up?

sanitycheck• 3 years ago

A ton of automated scraping is what it needs. Just the main UK supermarket chains would do, as it seems rather British in the choice of products even though there's no pricing actually shown.

lozenge• 3 years ago

The packages are changing so fast/often now that the shelf labels, online sizes and unit prices are often out of date. (Yes this is illegal, no nobody cares because it's £0.05 per product and they aren't doing it on purpose, they just don't make it a priority to have correct data).

lotsofpulp9• 3 years ago

Why would this benefit society? Price per unit is a trivial calculation, and most grocery stores already show it on the price tag.

Change in price over time is irrelevant for making a decision on whether or not something is worth the utility to price ratio now. If you are trying to time the market on junk food, then it is best to simply avoid it.

If, for some reason, you want to prevent Mondelez, or whichever other manufacturer, from earning more profit margin than it historically has, then you can look up their public financials most of the time:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MDLZ/mondelez/prof...

read_if_gay_3• 3 years ago

i can't believe the sole use you could think of is timing the market on junk food

eatsyourtacos• 3 years ago

Why would this benefit society?

To put factual and open information out there of how companies consistently just fuck with all of us and get away with every little thing they can because "profits!" and "their duty to investors!". e.g., the biggest lies our societies ever came up with

m3kw9• 3 years ago

For junk food which is what this mostly tracks, shrinkflation is good for people’s healths.

ilyt• 3 years ago

Well, till you need to get 2 burgers instead of one to feel full...

lotsofpulp9• 3 years ago

That is the point, people eat fewer burgers because they cannot afford more.

read_if_gay_3• 3 years ago

inflation is a good thing and here's why

corinroyal2• 3 years ago

Inflation Could Save Your Life! The reasons why may shock you.

mitthrowaway2• 3 years ago

Good news everyone! You can't afford snacks anymore.

drivers99• 3 years ago

To OP's point, would be interesting to have an option to filter out junk food.

abeppu• 3 years ago

Oddly, search only covers brand names?

https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=soap <- zero results https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=dove <- result has 'soap' in name

skinner927• 3 years ago

Oreo doesn’t work.

kernx16• 3 years ago

itd be interesting if tracking price is also included, although I can imagine that would be insanely difficult to keep track of for many reasons. I love this idea and hope it continues to grow.

phailhaus• 3 years ago

Super cool! Very clean, nice font. Some UX things I noticed:

1. In the scrolling feed on the homepage, a 0% change is shown as negative with a red down arrow

2. In the tracker page, 0% is grey (good!) but still with a down arrow, which isn't accurate

3. Might be a good idea to highlight egregious offenders over small decreases. Maybe bold the value if it's greater than 10-15%?

4. Would be cool to be able to sort to see the worst offenders!

boxed2• 3 years ago

I wonder why 0% items are shown on the big list at all. Like having a page of murderers with random innocent people with a text label under "not a murderer" :P

seabass-labrax3• 3 years ago

That would actually be beneficial to the innocent people if it gave them indemnity to prosecution! It's better to be cleared of a suspected crime than never prosecuted, in my opinion*.

* assuming the availability of pro bono legal aid as part of social welfare, a key part of any judicial system.

herpderperator• 3 years ago

It could be greater than 0% but less than 0.5%, ending up rounded down when displayed. The value getting checked might be against the raw value rather than the rounded one. Which, of course, is a bug.

syassami• 3 years ago

@samlader - now overlay the graphs with EPS growth * -1 to see correlation

hhthrowaway1230• 3 years ago

Would be nice to have the actual owning organisations in there. i bet these are largely subsidiaries of the same mother company.

corinroyal2• 3 years ago

This was my reaction too. I'd like to see which conglomerates and their divisions are the worst offenders. To break it down by brands alone makes it hard to identify who to name and shame.

karim793• 3 years ago

I remember using this app[0] on my phone years ago, I just checked and they have an API. I'm not sure, but if I recall correctly this allowed you to scan barcodes of things and warn you if they are sub-brand or subsidiary of [evil company you wish to avoid].

[0] https://www.buycott.com/api

doubled112• 3 years ago

Was it just based on that chart about the illusion of choice?

Vicinity96353• 3 years ago

Is this the one that explicitly won't let you boycott products by Israeli companies?

edit: Yep https://honestreporting.com/fighting-bds-with-buycotts/

You can use it to boycott anything (perceived as conservative or neutral) you like as long as it's not progressive or Israeli.

So, useless.

M3L0NM4N2• 3 years ago

I don't particularly care about shrinkflation. It gets calculated in the CPI (obviously) and most of the time it's goods that are unhealthy and overpriced to begin with.

cactusplant73746• 3 years ago

But a lot of us enjoy eating unhealthy foods. And as long as we don't have diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc then it's not a problem.

switch0073• 3 years ago

I think it's just a wild theory at this stage, but some doctors are saying that eating unhealthy food leads to diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure

andy_ppp• 3 years ago

Sure, most of these items also cost next to nothing to make too and costs to actually make have barely risen (as a percentage of the item cost). So mostly it’s companies using inflation to squeeze more money out of people.

M3L0NM4N2• 3 years ago

I agree that material cost is not a major component of the cost in a lot of these products.

It's marketing, distribution, etc. I don't think inflation is their excuse to squeeze more money out of you as it is to spend more in other areas of the business, as they should.

phreeza• 3 years ago

It's basically a dark pattern. Not illegal or anything, but designed to mask relevant information from the consumer.

ClumsyPilot2• 3 years ago

most of the time it's goods that are unhealthy and overpriced to begin with

Like British housing, horribly overpriced and half of it has mould.

Hard_Space• 3 years ago

I have thought about developing this site for the last 3-4 years! This is exactly what it would have looked like. Thanks for saving me the trouble (if I ever had got round to it).

karim793• 3 years ago

I would love to see something like this for tracking the sizes of the content catalogs of streaming services like Netflix, D+, and the other streaming services which go out of their way to create the illusion of sitting on top of an infinite content library. To see how those values change over time, while subscription fees remain the same (at best) would be quite revealing.

not_the_fda• 3 years ago

The idea is nice, but it seems to be tracking junk food, which you probably shouldn't eat and can easily avoid.

I'd be more interested in home goods such as soap, detergent; and food staples.

Koeniggimeno2• 3 years ago

There’s a listing for soap on the front page, I don’t think it’s confined to just junk food

KomoD3• 3 years ago

I searched soap and got no result

ClumsyPilot2• 3 years ago

So is shrinkflation actually included in official inflation numbers? If all bars of soap in the country become smaller by 10%, does 'official' inflation number go up? Are the folks tracking official inflation index equipped to measure all the various products per kilo, etc?

vuln2• 3 years ago

“Inflation? There’s no inflation, we’ve created millions of jobs and pay has increased!” - Current Administration

vuln2• 3 years ago

The truth hurts more than the downvotes.

hankchinaski2• 3 years ago

in the uk we measure the price of a basket of goods, which includes quantity adjustment. So packaging size is irrelevant. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/meth...

The simplest form of direct adjustment is quantity adjustment, which is used when there is a permanent size change in an item.

kepano3• 3 years ago

In a high-inflation environment your profits are constantly shrinking. The problem also affects small and independent makers of all kinds.

If you are an indie maker and priced your product at $10 in 2020, you're now effectively making $8.38 USD[1]. Assuming inflation will remain elevated and you want to maintain the same margins, you need to either:

1. increase prices

2. reduce quality/quantity/features

3. reduce supplier costs

4. reduce service costs

Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices. This is a case where none of the options are great.

[1] https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1702401372661096477

ImPostingOnHN4• 3 years ago

this is an accurate description of shrinkflation, though not a good justification of it

if companies were honest, they'd put"29% less, but the same price! Inflation, you know?", and more-informed consumers could make more-informed choices

indeed, "Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices" is a nicer way of saying "shrinkflation makes it easier to hide from consumers that they are receiving less value for their money"

Thank you for this site, if the author is here, it's something I felt we needed to make markets more informed and more efficient. I'll be submitting content.

adamc• 3 years ago

Being honest doesn't pay as well. If it did, they would just raise the price.

They are hoping you don't notice.

kepano3• 3 years ago

I'm not defending CPG companies. I'm pointing out that if you're an indie maker inflation is a problem you need to contend with in your own pricing. Once you start thinking about it from that perspective, you realize how difficult of a problem it is to solve in a way that feels fair to customers.

In theory software is easier because you could more easily change your pricing every month. With CPG these products sit on store shelves and the manufacturers have less direct control over the pricing.

imglorp• 3 years ago

There's more malfeasance here.

5. They expansively tier their product line with minor variation to remove the idea of a standard offering. Eg there are some 33 sizes of M&Ms so nobody could say "get me a bag of M&Ms" any more. Forget comparing cell service plans.

    * https://www.measuringhow.com/m-and-m-bag-sizes-guide/

6. They generate different model names for sale at different retailers to obstruct comparison shopping. The TV, appliance, and mattress industries are dirty here.

    * https://www.quora.com/Why-are-model-numbers-for-the-same-appliance-all-different-in-each-store-you-visit?share=1

7. They attempt to detect when comparison shopping is happening and intervene.

    * https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/16/amazon-has-a-patent-to-keep-you-from-comparison-shopping-while-youre-in-its-stores/
    * https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/accounting/discouraging-price-shopping/

masfuerte• 3 years ago

Shoe and boot manufacturers also do 6.

consp• 3 years ago

And onther method is offering a new product in the same category with less content for a higher price, eventually switch over all products and level the price, now you have less at the same or higher prices for all products (looking at you teisseire as a latest example)

dweinus• 3 years ago

That's a good explanation, but problems with silently reducing quantity are: - It attempts to trick the customer - As a customer, it makes it harder to depend on your product or buy predictably (a box of cereal used to last me through the week, now suddenly it doesn't) - It is now harder for me to comparison shop because I need to calculate cost per volume/weight - It is often done at a rate higher than inflation

This site is great, people need more transparency and companies need to be called out

n8cpdx• 3 years ago

Most of the products on the site appear to be candy/junk that shouldn’t be consumed in large quantities anyway. There is probably substantial social good being done by making the default portions of pringles and chocolate smaller.

djmips3• 3 years ago

What if people just buy more and now there is more package waste?

maxbond• 3 years ago

Very cool! Where are you sourcing data from?

elurg• 3 years ago

Most of these products are extremely unhealthy so shrinking portions should be considered a public service.

Koeniggimeno2• 3 years ago

Great Idea! Perfectly executed, great site to give some awareness to the average consumer.

nowooski• 3 years ago

I ticker arrows could use explanation. I assume green is good and red is bad, but it's not immediately clear what the units are ect.

ShadowBanThis01• 3 years ago

Love the idea, but how far back do the data go?

And someone pointed out the preponderance of junk food; I want to see core items that are often used in recipes. To me this is the most offensive aspect of these scams: You know your favorite recipe takes four cans of tomatoes, cans that have been the same size for decades. Now... WHOOPS, your meal is messed up because the manufacturer is too gutless to simply raise the price.

The one example I see on the site is butter: https://www.shrinkflation.io/search?query=butter

These jagoffs reduced the quantity by 20%, which is definitely enough to mess up recipes.

KomoD3• 3 years ago

but how far back do the data go?

Anywhere from 1297 to 9248 apparently, I guess he must have some kind of time traveler

MikusR• 3 years ago

In EU prices for food stuff have to also list price per KG.

sebazzz• 3 years ago

Yes, but no history.

cj• 3 years ago

This is also common in the US.

Example below. Top row is blurry but bottom row shows “per ounce” price on the bottom right. Tiny print and I imagine barely anyone actually shops that way.

I’m guessing there must be some US requirement for this otherwise I’m not sure why it’s commonplace.

https://supersafeway.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-S...

ericpauley• 3 years ago

I imagine barely anyone actually shops that way.

This feels so foreign to me; I largely ignore the overall price and shop by unit prices within a reasonable size range.

gen3• 3 years ago

Ancidotal, but myself and many of my friends shop this way. I've found that sometimes the larger bottle isn't cheaper per unit

Crunchified• 3 years ago

Here in the US, while unit pricing is commonly displayed, I frequently find that a store will use a wide variety of units, thereby negating the ability to easily compare items in this way. For the same type of product I may see cost per ounce, cost per pound, cost per each, cost per dozen, etc. for various sizes and brands. It's maddening, insulting, and probably in most cases malicious.

ftyers• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is insane e.g. I've seen cents/fl.oz, dollars/litre, cents/ml, dollars/unit. For the same product. And yes, totally malicious. Fresh Thyme does this. It's ugly.

realjohng• 3 years ago

Fabulous… I heart data

smath• 3 years ago

% change is over what time frame? YoY?

switch0073• 3 years ago

Warning: rant about brands

The sadistic think about brands is that people are paying for marketing team to continue to lie to them and brainwash them, to convince them to continue buying their products!

Media is full of brands - gosh I wonder how they have all that budget for expensive marketing campaigns !

It's so incredibly hard to wean someone off brands. I've been campaigning my family for years, but they still seem allergic to Aldi/Lidl etc.

Take cereal (eww):

Aldi Corn Flakes (500g) - £0.75 ($0.93)

Kellogs Cornflakes (500g) - £2.25 ($2.79)

3x more expensive! THREE. (some people might be thinking that $2.79 is nothing but just think in relative terms)

Yes Kellogs Cornflakes taste a bit nicer but that's not the comparison to make: a small serving of oats with some fruit is a MUCH better breakfast meal. Oats are roughly same amount of calories per gram but much more filling and less sugar, salt, fat etc and double the protein. But we're all addicted to cereal because the adverts brainwashed our parents in to thinking it's a healthy meal to have in the morning.

(EDIT: oops guess I'm a hypocrite) And has anyone tasted a McVities Digestive biscuit recently? (similar to a graham cracker, a distant relative of the shortbread - very very popular in the UK)? Absolutely vile. If you're still buying them you're literally an idiot and COVID must have destroyed your taste buds. Aldi own brand digestives taste like the old recipe of McVities Digestives at 1/3 of the price!

KomoD3• 3 years ago

but that's not the comparison to make

It is one a lot of people make, also... you make that comparison literally one line down.

jstanley• 3 years ago

I also find the Lidl Ginger Nut biscuits are vastly superior to the McVities ones, which taste burnt. I don't understand why McVities aren't better.

switch0073• 3 years ago

I don't understand why McVities aren't better.

People pay McVities to brainwash them in to thinking they're better, so they don't need to be better LOL

vmilner3• 3 years ago

I bought Lidl Tower Gate Chocolate Digestive Biscuits because of the annoying look-like-mcvities-packaging thing, but they're actually pretty good...

https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/14/590x/seconda...

hankchinaski2• 3 years ago

the choice as you say it's not between kellogs vs aldi cereals. But between highly processed and industrially produced crap and organic high quality raw foods. I personally don't buy any of the products on this list. But for a lot of people, there isn't a lot of choice but to go to a discount because that's literally only thing they can afford unfortunately.

ravenstine• 3 years ago

But sugary cereal is heart-healthy!

Oh wait, that's horseshit that even Kellogg can't get away with anymore.

https://thecounter.org/kellogg-sugary-cereal-healthy-label/

Breakfast cereal, namely corn flakes, is a mass psychosis. Have them sometimes if you like as a treat, but even then you might as well eat a bowl of ice cream. The idea of eating cornflakes was invented by a guy who gave his "patients" yogurt enemas. Why in 2023 are we still taking his advice?

xwdv2• 3 years ago

I don’t get it, would people rather pay higher prices up front?

A lot of times people don’t even use the entirety of a product they pay for. Shrinkflation can essentially just cut that part out. Even if you eat 100% of something, your brain was probably satiated after eating 80%, the rest is excess.

For stuff like candy you won’t notice a missing gummy bear or two. You’ll get the same satisfaction.

waffleiron2• 3 years ago

If it’s two gummy bears a year, a decade later it’s an empty bag.

daveoc642• 3 years ago

A lot of people resent how sneaky shrinkflation feels.

Manufacturers would gladly boast about increasing the size of their product if they did so, but do everything they can to hide when they've shrunk it.

Manipulative tricks like oddly shaped packaging or plastic fillers to take up the space that was previously product are examples of why people hate shrinkflation.

If something goes up in price but the quantity and quality stayed the same, people wouldn't feel like they're being tricked.

xwdv2• 3 years ago

They wouldn’t feel tricked, but then they’d be pissed off at the rising prices, which affects their ability to enjoy the product.

If someone sells you a bag of chips but they’ve already eaten two of the chips, your enjoyment of the bag will still be the same as if you had the whole bag. If they reveal that fact to you though, then your experience will be soured.

This is for the consumer’s own benefit.

vmilner3• 3 years ago

When I see perceivable sneakiness, I assume non-perceivable sneakiness is there too. (E.g. Poor product standards, worker abuse)

PCMcGee1• 3 years ago

I just don't understand why you would expect there to be any honest companies left to deal with. Any honest company has an insurmountable disadvantage in a competitive economy where the winners fund the policymakers. The honest business will always, eventually, become the prey of vulture hedge funds and predatory mergers seeking market capture. Even if it's a privately owned business, the monopolies will just drive down prices to force it out of the market, and then once market dominance is achieved, the price rises commensurate to recoup that lost profit. Even if this ploy isn't actually profitable in practice, the financing for such corporations that employ these methods is assured, through the stock market and big banks loan practices. Monopoly is really the only game left in town, they just have to make it look enough like a "free market" to keep people from trying to make it illegal. This is rather simply accomplished by having multiple different companies all owned by the same wealthy shareholders or mutual funds. But, I'm sure you can see all this for yourself, you just can't figure out a better system.

_aavaa_• 3 years ago

On mobile some of the prices show up as 8E210, which is a hilarious bug

kardos• 3 years ago

Or someone added a bogus 'observation'

jacquesm2• 3 years ago

Same on FF.

kamikaz1k• 3 years ago

seeing "Do not know how to serialize a BigInt"

salawat• 3 years ago

That's just a sign they knocked a few bits off datatype but are still trying to pass it off as the same thing. Serializers, however, are onto them.

vmilner3• 3 years ago

Sainsbury’s don’t like changing the weights encoded in their urls so although Cadburys 180g “Price locked” Fruit and Nut has been shrinkflated for over a year the link is still:

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-mi...

…www.Sainsbury's.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-milk-fruit---nut-200g

wppick• 3 years ago

Another source of shrinkflation is changing ingredients. Something that used to be 50% water is now 75% water as an example. Another is changing from olive oil to canola or palm or, and things like that.

purplecats2• 3 years ago

we need github tracking for the changes in metadata for products, like we do for legislation or the terms of use (like the one that unity deleted)

chongli4• 3 years ago

One of the worst offenders in this regard is packages of frozen meat products such as chicken wings, chicken fingers, nuggets, etc. They used to just contain the breaded meat with the net weight printed on the box (usually 2 lb).

Now they've started including frozen sauce packets as well. I've weighed some of these and found, for example, a 2 lb box of chicken wings that comes with more than half a pound of buffalo sauce. The net weight stays the same (2 lb) but if you weigh the chicken you're getting less than 1.5 lb of meat! The rest is all sauce!

freeqaz• 3 years ago

That's amazing that it isn't illegal to do that. I wonder if the laws will force companies to list out how much weight each component is like that.

But then again if there is no health impact (like with Trans fats) then is there any incentive for the regulators to change this?

Has the FDA ever done any work to protect consumers from sketchy marketing/labeling of products?

(I asked ChatGPT and it gave me a few bits. Apparently the term "Healthy" is regulated. And serving sizes are another that seem to be regulated. Maybe there is an angle within there that would make sense.)

djmips3• 3 years ago

Sort of related is chocolate. I feel like 'pure' chocolate is a loss leader and all of the other types with mixed in caramel bits etc are a way of selling you a bunch of cheaper stuff for the same weight and price! Better to just buy the least adulterated chocolate for the best deal.

webninja2• 3 years ago

Another is multi-gallon containers of protein powders online. Many contain 2/5th air at the top and are only 3/5ths full.

yoyoyo1122• 3 years ago

Yeah, people call it skimpflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation#Skimpflation

mkoubaa• 3 years ago

I mind this much more than I mind shrinkflation

djmips3• 3 years ago

Yes because it makes it potentially less healthy and often worse tasting / useful.

bjfish• 3 years ago

I think the toilet bowl cleaner used to be more viscous and last a long time.

spaceman_2020• 3 years ago

I’ve also seen a change in packaging, example: changing from a glass bottle to a plastic bottle.

spandextwins2• 3 years ago

Ronald Reagan used to have the misery index

DanHulton• 3 years ago

I feel like Reagan used to _cause_ the misery index.

spandextwins2• 3 years ago

They all do

eppsilon• 3 years ago

http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.aspx

patrickwalton• 3 years ago

We saw shrinkflation with our apartments when they went from a central dumpster to expecting everyone in an 8-unit complex to line up cans on the road

jqjqjqjq• 3 years ago

Should be able to sort by highest to lowest. Name and shame'em!

lwansbrough• 3 years ago

I would like to be able to sort by change delta. Cool site!

alex_young• 3 years ago

I don't really understand the recent focus on this. Shrinkflation has always been a thing, and it seems like it shouldn't be strongly correlated with actual inflation, since the critical equation is something like how much material should a given product contain to provide enough value to consumers, or in other words it's equally advantageous to optimize the value of your product in times of low or high inflation and thus optimize margins.

Maybe we just care more about it when we see prices raising in general? IDK.

prepend4• 3 years ago

It’s not a recent focus, it’s a continual focus.

Shrinkflation is important for understanding true price increase. It’s not enough to say “toothpaste went up 20%” in price because you really want to know “toothpaste went up 35% based on weight.”

It’s also frustrating because it’s just another level of bullshit to sift through when shopping. It would be nice if manufacturers and retailers didn’t do this.

c0pium8• 3 years ago

You don’t need to sift through it, though. There’s no prize for catching companies in the act. Figure out which toothpaste you want, decide whether youre willing to spend the money, then buy it or don’t.

They do it because otherwise people will complain incessantly about price increases and this way people only complain intermittently about shrinkflation.

sgu9993• 3 years ago

Nice project, very clean etc.

Now about that shrinkflation thing... There isn't a single product in that list that is actually healthy. Highly processed food is horrible for us and our environment, and the gigantic conglomerates making and selling them are a plague to our economies.

Veggies at my local farmers' market didn't shrink in size, prices went up slightly for some and it's very visible from the tag. Same goes for the bread I buy at the bakery, and the pasta I get in bulk in a small store nearby. If you have no choice but to rely on these products bought in a supermarket, you've been conned way before shrinkflation hit.

throwanem• 3 years ago

Toothpaste and soap aren't healthy?

bumby4• 3 years ago

Some toothpaste can be a net-negative, like those with abrasives. It's actually the mechanical aspect of brushing that does most of the hygiene. Frothing and minty taste of toothpaste are mostly marketing. Maybe there's a case for fluoride, but there are other sources like tap water (and that's a whole digression of it's own).

sgu9993• 3 years ago

Fair enough, but let's not pretend this is what shrinkflation is all about...

prepend4• 3 years ago

I don’t rely on candy. I enjoy it a few times per year.

It sucks that Cadbury eggs get smaller and smaller. Not because I need their nutrients to survive.

camhart• 3 years ago

Did they get smaller or just fewer in the pack?

cactusplant73746• 3 years ago

Bread wouldn't be bread if it wasn't processed. We would be eating the wheat kernels.

lq9AJ8yrfs• 3 years ago

Not all bread has

* added sugar

* preservatives

* texturizers

Cut these out and you're on the right side concerning processed foods.

sgu9993• 3 years ago

I wrote highly processed, not processed

pazimzadeh• 3 years ago

Recently I noticed that the baguettes at Whole Foods (in St. Louis) are about 2 inches shorter than before. They are the same price.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

In an ideal world, one UPC code would identify only one product with one set of ingredients and one weight. Want to make a "+20% free!" package? New UPC! Want to change the contents from 16% cacao to 14% cacao and some more sugar? Sure, new UPC.

The manufacturers would have to publish the contents for each UPC in a machine readable format.

Then the retailers would have to publish daily prices, again in a machine redable format.

...and the world would be a much nicer place for the consumer. Everyone could build apps on top of that, you could compare retailers, comparable items could be crowdsourced (eg, 1L of 3.5% fat milk and a list of all UPCs for that), shopping list apps could calculate the cheapest options to choose the cheapest store, or in cases with multiple stores in a cluster, tell you what to buy where, etc.

And the best thing is, that nobody actually regulates any prices or item sizes, just the consumer gets more informed.

Horffupolde• 3 years ago

You are free to do that. UPC is a private standard.

acover• 3 years ago

The business just make store specific upcs like mattresses. Same cookies, different number

rendaw• 3 years ago

I thought this too, re: for Amazon review farming, but products are never homogeneous from the start.

All products have multiple component suppliers, with different tolerances/varieties, where the components are judged "close enough". Suppliers come and go. And even if it's a single large supplier, they may have different farms/factories/etc so you won't even be getting homogeneous components from them.

saulrh• 3 years ago

Then extend product codes until every single individual batch - or even every single individual item - has a unique ID. Store information hierarchically if you have to to save space, but we have the technology today to track every single component of our entire supply chain. The automotive, aerospace, and defense industries already do this. The food industry even has the processes in place, they just only do the bare minimum to execute a recall when the FDA calls them on their shit. Even pet food can pull it off! All we have to do is make manufacturers go that rest of the way.

Ancalagon• 3 years ago

Should probably complete the price point review prior to allowing the data points to be shown. This dove bar has a price point from the year 9999 and its messing with the whole graph: https://www.shrinkflation.io/products/535

IAmGraydon• 3 years ago

The worst part of shrinkflation is restaurants who have reduced the sizes of their meals, in my opinion. I’ve seen this quite a lot in everything from fast casual places like Cava to locally owned establishments.

jacquesm2• 3 years ago

That may not be a bad thing per se. In plenty of restaurants the amount of food in a serving is way too large for me and the alternative probably was to raise prices. In restaurants food isn't usually the high margin product, that's alcohol.

c0pium8• 3 years ago

Most fast casual places don’t sell much alcohol.

willio58• 3 years ago

I've definitely experienced this with colgate toothpaste and sure enough it's on this list!

zamadatix• 3 years ago

For some reason the same product often shows up multiple times in the list. And I don't mean "the product looks the same" I mean "the URL it links is even the exact same" .

hinkley9• 3 years ago

I was just talking today to someone about how they don't like food from a certain global coffee chain anymore because their food has gotten kinda crappy.

Shrinkflation generally means same price for less product (grams, fluid ounces), but enshitification by slowly decreasing the quality of the ingredients is also a problem.

Do we put that under the shrinkflation umbrella or track it as a separate problem? Since they are both unwanted solutions to the same problem, seems like they should be kept together (to avoid a Goodhart's Law fiasco)

I recall eating an Oreo after fifteen years of not having one. At first I just thought I'd forgotten what they actually tasted like, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see a long chain of focus groups asking customers if cookie A and cookie B taste the same, if one tastes better, and slowly changing the formula to only alienate 0.2% of the customers each time until one day I wander up and find I'm part of the 10% they've cumulatively alienated.

See also how only some of us can taste certain artificial sweeteners as sugary toxic waste instead of sugar (saccharin tastes to me like drinking soda after licking a 9 volt battery)

cogman10• 3 years ago

Just one more factor to consider, some ingredients are no longer available.

Trans fats are a good example of this. They used to be the prime replacement for saturated fats. Now, in the US, they are effectively banned.

This hit oreos. [1]

[1] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2006/01/02/manufacturers-tri...

hinkley9• 3 years ago

Fair point. Were oreos always palm oil or were they lard back in the day?

The fracking industry has made guar gum too expensive to use as a food emulsifier. I know someone who reacts to xanthan gum (which has all but replaced guar) and she's not a happy camper, because it's in fucking everything.

aequitas• 3 years ago

but enshitification by slowly decreasing the quality of the ingredients is also a problem.

Every time you see a package with “new and improved recipe” you can bet it only improved their margins by using cheaper ingredients, not the actual taste.

amelius4• 3 years ago

How is that possible if the rock solid theory underlying the free market promises us better products? /s

hinkley9• 3 years ago

They didn't say who the recipe was improved for...

amelius4• 3 years ago

Do we put that under the shrinkflation umbrella

No we call it just that, enshittification.

krapp2• 3 years ago

No we call it just that, enshittification.

I'll be glad when this juvenile meme finally passes out of Hacker News' system.

_sys49152• 3 years ago

my sensory skills are on point. its beyond infuriating when i notice a change in a food or drink product, hop online and search for the others with the pitchforks to join in with - only to find crickets.wav.

zerd• 3 years ago

I've been buying the exact same pair of boxers for years. This year I noticed that they were actually smaller, by almost an inch. Elastic band is smaller and the actual length, so it started chafing. Shrinkflation even on clothes.

pcthrowaway• 3 years ago

Heh.. I'd like to blame my boxers getting tighter on the same thing but I'm pretty sure it's just my waistline that's grown

pnt12• 3 years ago

I've heart the term "skimoflation". There have been posts on HN about it.

imbusy111• 3 years ago

A lot of it looks like candy, so it could be a good thing.

jacobsenscott• 3 years ago

What's the problem? You want to keep everything the same size and pay more? That's the other option. You know it works out to the same amount of stuff for the same amount of money, right?

DoughnutHole• 3 years ago

Yes, because it’s easier to notice and adjust your purchasing decisions accordingly.

The point of shrinkflation is to obfuscate the price increase and hope that some consumers don’t notice.

andymal• 3 years ago

This is great! I wanted to add a product that I recently noticed was smaller, but I no longer use Google, so I'm unable to go through the submission process. Maybe if someone else sees this you can add Kingsford charcoal. 4-5 years ago bags came in a pack of 2x20 lb. Then 2022 they were 2x18lb. This year they are 2x16lb. Can't wait until we can just buy a 2 pack of briquettes.

steine65• 3 years ago

Very cool. Looks like it could use some more controls to reduce bad data. For example the Dove year 9999 data point.

I would love to see a list of Parent companies. Single brands will be hard to remember.

furyofantares• 3 years ago

I don't like that it's sneaky, but I would rather candy servings get smaller rather than prices get higher, if those are the options.

akomtu• 3 years ago

Why does it track some irrelevant products? It should track things that matter: milk, bread, meat, fish, fruits and so on.

c0pium8• 3 years ago

It tracks things people actually buy.

purplecats2• 3 years ago

can you automate this with amazon parsing?

robertheadley• 3 years ago

Great, but manual input and seems to be focused on the UK. I think someone needs to brute force this problem.

lucb1e• 3 years ago

Wanted to add a product, but you can't sign up for the site: you need to go sign up to Google first...

incrudible• 3 years ago

Shrinkflation of these products is better than increased prices, because you should not eat/drink so much of this crap anyway.

playerm1• 3 years ago

Werther's Original did not betray us.

wackget• 3 years ago

When submitting a weight, the site should allow you to submit a reference such as a newspaper article, an archived website, or other form of proof. And the proof should be publicly visible.

Fatnino• 3 years ago

I have an original Pringle's can from the late 70s or whenever it was. (yes, it used to have an apostrophe in the name).

It contained 4.5 ozs of "newfangled potato chips" (I think they legally can't call them chips anymore). That works out to about 125grams give or take.

This site is kvetching that they are at 200 grams now.

Ps, my can doesn't have a UPC barcode on it because they hadn't been invented yet.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

What a horrible UI and information presentation. What does the scrolling information even mean? Are the up/down arrows/percents tracking % change in package size, % change in per unit price resulting from the new package size, or…what? Are the listed package sizes the before or after sizes? Why if I go beyond the front page to the main list (which provides the same information and lack of explanation as the scroll, but with product pictures) and click on a product does it cause a crash to a “Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).” and why is the back button broken so that once this occurs, it stays on the error page even as the URL in the address bar walks back?

thatxliner• 3 years ago

Crowdsourced data?

martin82• 3 years ago

Nice idea, but that site seems to track only "food" that is basically poisonous to begin with.

If these brands make the portions smaller, they are actually doing us a favour.

After a quick browse, I haven't found anything on that site that actually qualifies as food.

Couldn't care less how prices of these items develop.

Shrinkflation Tracker

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