Getting Small

October 4, 2008

Yesterday I griped about the slightly obscene size of juice containers that are sold in supermarket aisles (I didn't add the omnipresent two-liter soda bottle to this screed, but I could have). Today I am zeroing in on the opposite trend in food marketing. I call it The Incredible Shrinking Container syndrome.

For some time now, the size of containers of all kinds has been shrinking. I first noticed this about ten years ago, when the juice boxes I was buying for Spencer shrank from eight ounces to six and a half. It was a subtle change; the boxes just grew a little narrower. Considering that Spencer was the kind of kindergartener whose teacher complained that "he must live on air, he eats so little", I figured that practically speaking, he still would not finish the container anyway, although I was somewhat annoyed at the concept of getting less product for the same price. It was really the sneakiness of the shrinkage that bothered me.

Change the package, shrink it a little, no one will notice.

Then, a few years ago, I noticed that the half-gallon of ice cream I was buying looked a little, well, slimmed down. When I checked the size of the container listed at the bottom, lo and behold, it had indeed shrunken to 1.75 quarts. I was incredulous; the "half-gallon" of ice cream was not just a size, it was a standard. Were we now supposed to put "one-and-three-quarter-quarts of vanilla ice cream" on the grocery list?

It would be lovely to think of this as the manufacturer's attempt to moderate our eating habits of this high-calorie, high-cholesterol delight, but of course, that had nothing to do with the size change. It was a way of charging more without the perception of charging more.

The most insulting aspect of this change was, again, the sneakiness - no mention was made of the fact that the package was smaller. The half-gallon of ice cream had just quietly faded into history, along with the seven-dollar adult movie ticket and $3.00-per-gallon gas.

Recently, Breyers has gone even further, shrinking the container to 1.5 quarts. That is barely more than one-third of a gallon! And Tropicana just did a similar sleight-of-hand with the 96-ounce orange juice container; the container was redesigned, it trumpeted a better-designed pour spout, and oh, yes, was now only 89 ounces. Not that this was mentioned, except in the fine print at the bottom of the container.

Cereal boxes are also going on surreptitious diets. Caveat emptor, indeed.

I don't have a problem with smaller containers, actually; as I mentioned in my last post, some really large bottles don't fit well in refrigerators and are resource-wasteful. I do mind the lack of truthfulness.

Interestingly, the shrinking containers are usually the ones that contain actual food, such as ice cream or orange juice, or even cereal. The really junky stuff, containing ingredients that came from a test tube, is still big and cheap.

I know that globally, food prices are increasing. I also think that this gives us an opportunity to think more about what we eat and, perhaps, to consume less.

It would just be nice if manufacturers could treat us with some respect.