Honey I Shrunk the Groceries!
I heard a great interview on NPR yesterday with Ben Popken, editor for The Consumerist, about the recent phenomina of grocery store shrinkage — and no, this isn’t about teenage box boys and their aversion to cold water. This is a much more serious problem, sorry guys.
The scoop: There’s a good chance that you’re paying the same amount of money for a product that is slightly smaller than before. As inventory is turned over, there are reports of the different sized products sitting on the same shelf, for the same price.
The reason: To decrease production costs, rather than raise prices. Sounds kinda nice, right? Manufacturers of CPG’s (Consumer Packaged Goods) continue to make the same profits as before in the face of sky-rocketing transportation and production costs, and consumers won’t know the difference.
It’s an inoculation of the worst kind.
The problem: Manufacturers are helping the general populace to ignore the greatest problem facing the human race today — energy. By pulling the wool over our eyes and tricking us into believing that everything is fine, we become complacent and unknowingly ignorant to the realities of the age. Gas prices have gone through the roof and now the entire country is paying closer attention to their driving habits. It hurts, gas stations are closing, but we’re reaching the end of an era and change is supposed to hurt a little — we’ll appreciate the end result more.
Kinda sounds like some war that’s going on right now…