The devious cousin of inflation

With escalating costs, food companies are not averse to underhanded tactics to shortchange customers without them noticing.

I AM a careful shopper. I like to read labels on food packaging to check the ingredients, expiry dates and the weight to make sure I get the best value for my buck. For the most part, I will give the manufacturers the benefit of the doubt and trust what is labelled is true.

As a retiree, I have become even more conscious of my grocery costs. One item I always buy in large quantities are eggs because we eat a lot of it, and it’s often an ingredient in many recipes.

Eggs come in various sizes, but most recipes will state the number required, not the size, so I would use medium size eggs. Then I started coming across recipes that called for large eggs, and it made me wonder what constituted a large egg.

The Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry has six grades of chicken eggs in Malaysia, with grade AA, a.k.a. jumbo, being the highest and grade E the lowest.

The weight for an AA egg is 70g and above, grade A (65g to 69.9g), grade B (60g to 64.9g), grade C (55g to 55.99g), grade D (50g to 54.9g) and grade E (less than 50g).

But not all egg producers label them by the letters of the alphabet and instead they go with large, medium and small.

So let’s assume A eggs are large eggs and they should be at least 65g in weight. Do egg suppliers keep to the grades?

I set out to find out. (I know, I know, this retiree has too much time on her hands!) I bought large and grade A eggs from three brands and weighed the eggs on my digital kitchen scale.

Two brands claim their large/A eggs are 65-70g each. The third one sells 15 eggs in a plastic box and gives only the net weight of 900g, which means the average weight of its L eggs is 60g.

After I weighed the eggs randomly, the results I got were 61g, 63g and only one brand gave me 69g.

I have since seen other egg brands in the market that state their L eggs are 60g and above, and another a mere 50g.

Since eggs aren’t machine-made, their sizes could be affected if the laying hens are, say, moody because they were less well fed or feeling under the (hot) weather. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so demanding and just be grateful we have affordable eggs.

But shouldn’t there be consistency in how eggs are graded since they are linked to controlled pricing?

There are other products that do not seem to match their weight or size.

For example, I like to buy a lot of frozen pangasius or patin fish slices. My family likes the taste and because they are boneless, I think I get good value.

When I first bought them before the Covid-19 pandemic, a 1kg packet was less than RM10.

Today, the price has shot up to RM19.90.

I grit my teeth and still pay, but I suspect I am being bilked.

Before, a packet would be enough to make a dish for my family of seven adults, but now I need one and a half packets.

So out came my digital scale again and I weighed a frozen packet. It came to 1,032g. After the fish had fully defrosted and the water drained, the weight had dropped to 595g.

Okay, its stated total weight was 1kg, and I can’t prove there was more fish and less ice in my much earlier purchases.

But I know for sure that one packet is not enough to feed the family.

This, to me, is shrinkflation at work.

According to an npr.com report, “Beware Of ‘Shrinkflation,’ Inflation’s Devious Cousin”, this is a term coined by economist Pippa Malmgrena a decade ago to replace what was known as “downsizing”. This is what companies do: reducing the size or quantity of their products while charging the same price or even more.

The report also quotes consumer advocate Edgar Dworsky, who explains that this is “a sneaky price increase” because consumers tend to be price conscious but not net-weight conscious.

“They can tell instantly if they’re used to paying US$2.99 for a carton of orange juice and that goes up to US$3.19. But if the orange juice container goes from 64 ounces to 59 ounces, they’re probably not going to notice.”

Businessinsider.com, in an August 2022 report, says that’s how manufacturers are hiding rising costs, and lists many everyday products which have been “shrunk”.

Among them are Frito-Lay slimming Doritos chips from 9.75 ounces to 9.25 ounces; Gatorade redesigning its 32 ounces bottle with the claim to make it “more aerodynamic and easier to grab”, but effectively reducing the volume to 28 ounces, a drop of 14%; Hershey cutting down its 18-ounce pack of dark chocolate Kisses by almost two ounces and Royal Canin’s reducing some of its cat food tins from 5.9 ounces to 5.1 ounces.

These are products sold in the United States but are also popular in many countries, Malaysia included.

In the UK, an Office of National Statistics survey showed that food products like meat, jams, sauces, ice cream and ready meals accounted for 70% of all products hit by shrinkflation, but many household items like toilet rolls, diapers, tissues, kitchen rolls and washing up liquids also “shrank”, reported goodhousekeeping.com.

Undoubtedly, industries everywhere face sharp increases in the cost of essential ingredients, packaging and raw materials, and shrinking or downsizing their products without affecting prices seems to work well on consumer spending psychology.

Shrinkflation is also evident in many restaurants that are serving dishes in smaller portions with lesser amounts of ingredients and often at increased prices.

We can spot it in stuff like packaged food and drinks, but what about in less obvious goods like cooking gas cylinders?

I casually asked my gas delivery guy if there was any shortweight in the amount of LPG in the tank, which upset him greatly.

I backed off since I can’t weigh the tank, but I did buy a gas valve regulator that shows the tank pressure and I am keeping tabs on whether the gas is finishing faster than normal.

Shrinkflation has sadly shrunk my good faith and trust as a shopper/consumer with mild paranoia setting in. It takes me a lot longer to shop now because I scrutinise the labels and use my phone calculator to try to work out which options give me the best value.

And yes, when I buy my eggs from my sundry shop, I will weigh a random one from the tray at the cashier just to be sure they really make the grade.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.