I noticed while buying orange juice that the Fred Meyer store brand had a big notice on the carton saying “STILL 64 OUNCES!” I was like, Whoa! Are half-gallons of OJ no longer half-gallons? Sure enough, other brands had gone down to 59 oz. Apparently last winter’s freeze damaged Florida orange crops, making juice more expensive. It will be interesting to see if OJ goes back to true half-gallons in the future, if we have a milder winter.
Yet it’s not just juice — I’ve seen all sorts of products shrink slightly over the past few years. This is a separate issue from super-sizing, which tends to occur with cheap, crappy non-food. Seems like a dollar buys you ever more junk food and ever less real nourishment. It’s a market force in the wrong direction, and I don’t see it going the other way anytime soon.
The Australian arm of Cadbury not only reduced the sizes of all its chocolate blocks (while keeping up the price) but had the gall to claim it was doing so to fight obesity. Fortunately, they also switched out milk solids to vegetable oils (claiming it made no difference to the texture or taste – lies!), so it made it easy to boycott. Unfortunately for my boycott, they’ve quietly returned some of the varieties to the old milk solids recipe, which is again delicious.