Investigative Report: The Incredible Shrinking Groceries, Part 1 (Coffee)

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but our groceries are shrinking. You could be forgiven for missing it, though. Because the manufacturers are tricking us. Well, duh, they've been tricking us for years with advertising. But now what they're doing is selling us smaller and smaller amounts of product, but making it look like we're buying the same thing. This is just part one of (I hope) a multi-part series, should I be able to gather more evidence (and keep interest!). This is the only example that I'm aware of that I have in my house, and since this is the first thing I've noticed myself, I thought I'd start with it.

I've seen newspaper articles about--in particular--Tropicana orange juice. They make a slightly smaller than half-gallon of juice in a container that looks pretty much the same. So they can sell you 59 ounces or so for the price of 64 ounces (or shoot, the price might even have gone up!). A half gallon of ice cream became 1.75 quarts, and is now usually 1.5 quarts (but the packages got more creatively shaped). They do it with bars of soap, by molding them into a more hour-glassy shape. They do it with lotions and makeup with fancy, curvy bottles. But what do you do when the package is really common?

With coffee, the manufacturers long ago discovered we could be unobservant about what we're buying. The three pound can of coffee is long gone, having dropped in ounces drastically over the years. But the can size--roughly--is still with us.  I just had no idea how far down that 48 ounces has dropped. I decided to take out the last three cans of coffee I've bought: a half-caf one, the one that I just emptied, and the new one I bought this week. The Maxwell House half-caf one could--as a specialty blend--be forgiven for being a little less than usual. It was 34.5 ounces. That's quite a bit less than three pounds. But maybe it is the standard, since the can I just finished, a Kroger brand was just the same.

But, ho! Look here! The new "Great Value" (Walmart) can I bought just a couple of days ago turns out to not be a great value at all. 27.8 ounces. Twenty-seven point eight friggin' ounces! Can you believe that? It's dropped below two pounds (32 ounces), and it's still in a three-pound can! That takes chutzpah! I can tell you this: I've been letting it slide before, but I'm going to be watching my coffee purchases from now on. If there's an ounce-to-dollars comparison available, I'm definitely going to make it. I hate being ripped off, and I hate being swindled. That's what this is. By packaging these things like they're the same, but dropping the content, they're deliberately tricking all of us. And that sucks.

I'm going to try to continue this as a series. And I'm going to have to think up examples to check out. The one thing I've thought of that would be extremely difficult to change without people noticing is liquid beverages. Sodas, sure. We're used to their sizes, but they're so cheap to make, it isn't probably necessary to rip us off there. But what about alcohol?  There's no way you're going to change the size of a bottle of hooch, and not have us boozers crying foul! But guess what I noticed? My new bottle of Smirnoff has a different aerator in it, one that lets the vodka slosh out faster than it used to. I'm positive it isn't my (hic) imagination. . .