this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Shrinkflation

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A community about companies who sneakily adjust their product instead of the price in the hopes that consumers won't notice.

We notice. We feel ripped off. Let's call out those products so we can shop better.

What is Shrinkflation?

Shrinkflation is a term often coined to refer to a product reducing in size or quality while the price remains the same or increases.

Companies will often claim that this is necessary due to inflation, although this is rarely the case. Over the course of the pandemic, they have learned that they can mark up inelastic goods, which are goods with an intangible demand, such as food, as much as they want, and consumers will have no choice but to purchase it anyway because they are necessities.

From Wikipedia:

In economics, shrinkflation, also known as the grocery shrink ray, deflation, or package downsizing, is the process of items shrinking in size or quantity, or even sometimes reformulating or reducing quality, while their prices remain the same or increase. The word is a portmanteau of the words shrink and inflation.

[...]

Consumer advocates are critical of shrinkflation because it has the effect of reducing product value by "stealth". The reduction in pack size is sufficiently small as not to be immediately obvious to regular consumers. An unchanged price means that consumers are not alerted to the higher unit price. The practice adversely affects consumers' ability to make informed buying choices. Consumers have been found to be deterred more by rises in prices than by reductions in pack sizes. Suppliers and retailers have been called upon to be upfront with customers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation

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  1. Posts must be about shrinkflation, skimpflation or another related topic where a company has reduced their offering without reducing the price.
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  3. You must provide a comparison between the old and new products, what changed and evidence of that change. If possible, also provide the prices and their currency, as well as purchase dates.
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n.b.: for moderation purposes, only posts in English or in French are accepted.##

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Food with artificial sweeteners tastes bitter and unsweetened? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Today's culprit is... Jello's Chocolate Pudding! Oh wait, no, "pudding snacks", whatever in the label-regulation-dodging fuck that means.

Posting here because this has quickly become a very common shrinkflation tactic where the manufacturer substitutes fructose/sucrose in their main product with the cheaper aspartame and stevia and calls it "healthy". There is no sucrose-only version of this product anymore.

However, these shrinkflated products taste bitter, unsweetened and are completely unappetizing to me. So I end up having to look at labels very carefully (usually some thin text at the bottom of the label) to make sure they didn't sneak in some artificial sweetener.

The strangest part is I haven't seen or heard of anyone complaining about it, are we in the minority of people for who artificial sweeteners are bitter, like Cilantro that tastes like soap? Both me and my partner find it bitter and unappetizing in any product, but only I have the "cilantro gene".

I did find these articles on the topic:

https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2013/08/22/study-fake-sweeteners-taste-disgusting-people/ (the source link is dead, here's a wayback machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20130826013630/http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/why-fake-sweeteners-can-taste-funky/)

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120531102334.htm

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[–] themeatbridge 34 points 9 months ago (6 children)

I can't stand fake sugar, and it never is not noticeable. But I often find I'm alone in that. We will get popsicles or some new fangled soda, and I'll immediately taste the bitter alcohol flavor and it ruins the food. My kids and my wife don't mind, and I haven't met others who notice. I would rather have something unsweetened than have it taste like stevia or monk fruit or aspartame or sucralose. It all tastes bad.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I’ll immediately taste the bitter alcohol flavor

I think this might be genetic.

I have one of those "bitter super-taster" genes which means that I taste bitterness in things ~80% of people don't, and things that people do generally think of as bitter might be overwhelmingly so for me, and for me some artificial sweeteners definitely do taste bitter. Not all of them though, so eg. stevia is fine. There's probably a ton of different mutations that can cause you to taste things differently

[–] VonCesaw 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm gonna be honest, I have the same gene, and it entirely depends on the company's skill in formulating the product

I've never had a shelf stable packaged food that had artificial sugars that ever tasted even "acceptable", and most soft drinks suffer from the same issue. ENERGY DRINKS however are the sweet spot that everyone should be mimicking, where they use a mix of glucose and acesulfame K so you taste both real sugar and sweetener

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I seem to have the same gene, but I've only noticed things like splenda and stevia have that nasty bitter taste. All the other sweeteners are fine. Actually, aspartame is bitter, but it's a good, coffee kind of bitter, but maybe that's just because I've gotten used to it.

[–] rdyoung 9 points 9 months ago

You are not alone. I've never tried but I bet I could taste just a few granules of fake sugar in a glass of water. I notice it in anything it's in, regardless of the amount.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It’s genetic. I feel the same way, aspartame tastes like filmy chemically shit to me. I also can’t stand cilantro, how bout you?

Maybe there’s correlation

[–] themeatbridge 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't have the cilantro gene, but my wife does. So in our sample size of three...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Well it was worth a shot!

[–] Addv4 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Afraid I'm going to have to contradict that one. I rather dislike sucralose/aspertame (don't like the taste and can notice it when I eat it), but I love cilantro. I cook with it constantly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Fair enough! Mostly was wondering if they correlated at all, but I also have a ton of other weird… let’s call them “quirks” as well so who even knows.

Genetics is wild sometimes

[–] Sterile_Technique 4 points 9 months ago

Generally agreed, but there's a select few products that manage to use those sweeteners without hitting you with that chemistry-experiment-gone-wrong taste.

I think most products that use artificials just do a 1-for-1 of sugar either in amount or whatever metric for 'sweetness' they use, and ignore the other flavors.

My hypothesis is that manufacturers that use them either haven't figured out or don't care to use them correctly; people buy the hell out of it cuz low calorie, so I guess there's not as much incentive to perfect the flavor? ...and that the few exceptions - the ones that actually taste good - are just happy accidents lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I started noticing after I stopped drinking alcohol. Especially with sweeteners that are literally an alcohol, like maltitol. It tastes like they put rubbing alcohol in it.

[–] Delphiantares 2 points 9 months ago

All the fake sugars taste off and I can never put my finger on it . It always starts as "this is really sweet” then "what's that god awful aftertaste?" So much so that I prefer seltzers and the like and are not sweetened by anything . Not alone in this but we are very much a minority

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Just on the pudding snacks bit. Unfortunately this is not new and is very common.

Words like pudding are highly regulated by the FDA. You can look up exactly what they mean by googling the FDA definition, they say exactly how much sugar, fat, etc needs to be in a serving.

Cheese is the one I noticed. Unless it says "cheese" - it ain't cheese. Chee-z, cheesy, cheese-flavor, chee-tos,its,ums whatever are all highly processed cheese-flavor that could have little or no cheese in them.

You may already know that, but a shocking amount of Americans don't

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I've always felt these regulations was a bit toothless when companies could get away with "Chocolatey Chips" instead of "Chocolate Chips", and the average consumer would be none the wiser to the word dance that's going on here. But I am glad they exist at all.

Re: American Cheese, Nile Red actually made some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aGNAxN5Z-o

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yea, chocolatey can mean chocolate, in every day talk

"How did you get these chocolate cookies so chocolaty?"

I think they should have to go all the way down to "chocolate flavored"

"Granola bar with chocolate flavored coating"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://lemmy.ca/post/13056164 source btw, it's a real thing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

yep, i accidently bought a box of "chocolatey" granola bars. sent a nasty email, not bought anything from them since.

[–] rdyoung 8 points 9 months ago

Don't forget, cheese product, any time they add a word like product, it means that it's not what you think it is.

[–] cornshark 5 points 9 months ago

Frozen dairy dessert!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Check out the new wyngz in the frozen food section!

[–] EvilLootbox 23 points 9 months ago

Having less than 4 grams of milk in a 106gram "pudding", it being nothing but water and cornstarch is a crime in itself. What a disgusting product.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Aspartame is nasty to me. It has the disgusting after taste that I never liked. I never liked diet soda, and mainly drink water now. I used to be able to drink soda zero, like coke zero or whatever but they switched whatever the old sweetener was with aspartame. Probably better for my health over all, but the fact companies switched out ingredients like that has made me more cautious when buying sweet items now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

One of us!

I'm also at the point where I have to look at the ingredients before I buy sweets, otherwise it's a pipeline from the grocery store to the food bank.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The old sweetener was Ace-K, acesulfame potassium, I'm pretty sure.

I don't mind the taste of Aspartame, but I've noticed I get bad headaches when having too much foods with Aspartame, so I tend to avoid it. The occasional pop is okay, but much more is too much.

Hopefully Monk Fruit stays trendy, it's my favourite tasting of the sugar substitutes. Splenda is okay too. Not great, not terrible,

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I have noticed monk fruit in some ice creams and they taste good. I agree that I hope it stays trendy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Artificial sweetener tastes sweeter than sugar. The problem with this pudding is that they seem to have sweetened it with a potent laxative.

[–] SpeedLimit55 5 points 9 months ago

I can’t stand any artificial sweeteners in food or drinks. Just got some Snack Pack chocolate pudding the other day and it only used sugar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Coca-Cola does this same thing for years with some sort of Fanta and Sprite. It's general now. They want you to eat and drink chemicals instead of bad food.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

That's why I only eat food that's not made out of chemicals. Conceptual food that is. I just ate the idea of a hamburger

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've used the Stevia-based baking mix (it's mostly Erithitol) and it's very bitter if I taste some straight. But when using it in chocolate chip cookies or coffee it's fine. I've also tried the Zevia pop ^(don't^ ^start^ ^a^ ^political^ ^argument)^ and it tastes bitter there too.

Otherwise aspartame has a strong diet flavor to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah stevia is bitter, or rather especially the aftertaste. I feel it only makes sense if what you are sweetening is bitter, like coffee/tea.

Straight erythritol isnt bitter, but it's not as sweet as sugar and has quite a cooling effect. But I actually use straight erythritol as a near-zero calorie sprinkle on toast and oatmeal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Jell-O-Original-Chocolate-Pudding-Cups-Snack-Value-Pack-8-Ct-Cups/21677805?from=/search