Lois Thielen: Save your grocery money, push back against corporate greed
Most of us have noticed grocery prices have gone up continually since the 2020 pandemic.
Most of us also have noticed an added feature of this situation, that of the amount of the product often decreasing in volume and sometimes in quality as well.
My most shocking case of this occurred a few months ago when I reached for a bottle of canola oil at the supermarket and saw the new slimmed-down version. The company had reduced the volume from 48 ounces to 40 ounces and kept the price the same, a move today referred to as "shrinkflation."
It's a move consumers are noticing and vociferously calling out on social media. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, said in a Feb. 4, 2024, X (formerly Twitter) post, "From Doritos to Oreos to toilet paper, giant corporations are shrinking how much they give but charging the same price or more. We're not fooled. Corporations are boosting their profits with these tricks. It's time to crack down on shrinkflation and corporate greed."
One of the most blatant examples of this attitude that consumers were too dumb to notice a change in product size was that experienced by Texas bakery owner Maline Lee, who makes wedding cakes professionally and relies on Betty Crocker Super Moist white cake mix for one recipe she makes (although her other cakes are from scratch.)
Lee noticed when restocking her supplies last November that the cake mixes she had just purchased seemed lighter than those she had purchased earlier. Upon examination, she saw the new cake mixes contained 14.25 ounces of dry mix, compared to the 16-25-ounce boxes she used to buy. Most disturbing, the company had not changed the directions for use on the box, calling for the same amount of water, oil and eggs to be added to the now smaller amount of dry mix, which would alter the texture of the finished cake.
Lee didn't just complain about shrinkflation. She shared her findings with her 274,000 followers on Tik Tok and also wrote a letter to the 103-year-old Betty Crocker company, which is owned by Minnesota's General Mills.
The company responded that it had downsized all 20 of its Super Moist mixes with the explanation of "Keeping our product affordable, especially given the rising prices for ingredients, is important to us because it's important to consumers like you." But at least the company has since updated their package directions.
Not ever coming from these big corporations is an accurate and honest explanation of their shrinkflation tactics. They will cite the rising costs of production, which includes the rising prices of raw materials, transportation, labor, utilities and so forth. We know companies have increased prices; so do we, the consumers. But they don't want to discuss their own huge profits and bloated executive salaries and benefits, as reported by Guardian US columnist Robert Reich in a Dec. 5, 2023, Facebook post which read, "Kellogg's raised prices 14 percent from February 2022 to February 2023. The company then reported better than expected profits and executives shared plans to spend more on stock, buybacks and bigger dividends."
An increasing number of Americans aren't buying the lie that increased operating costs are the sole reason for increases in supermarket prices or reductions in volume or quality. According to a new poll done by Navigation Research, about 59% of Americans think corporate greed is a major cause of inflation.
Also referred to as "greedflation" and "skimpflation" companies may also decrease the quality of the materials or ingredients used, as in using a poorer quality of paper for paper towels, while also cutting back on the number of sheets in the roll.
But we consumers hold more cards than big corporations think. We don't have to keep buying overpriced products or buying them from the same source. We can buy generic versions of name-brand products, which often are made by the same companies, or buy them from discount stores. We can choose to cut out some over-priced and over-processed foods completely. We can compare prices and buy the cheaper brand. As a result of this type of pushback, some name brands already have slowed down price increases or even reduced their prices.
— This is the opinion of Times Writers Group member Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published the first Sunday of the month.
This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Lois Thielen: Save your grocery money, push back against corporate greed
