How food companies are swapping ingredients to ~~reduce costs~~ maximize profits
That's the real headline. We are getting scammed left and right while food companies are recording record profits.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Right. Writing it as they did makes it seem that the food companies are doing this out of necessity, like they're barely getting by. They're doing this because they're evil, greedy, fucks.
Writing it as they did makes it seem that the food companies are doing this out of necessity, like they’re barely getting by.
More insidiously, it could also be read in a way that makes these companies look like heroes. "We're reducing costs to keep food prices low." type BS.
It could be true that middlemen are doing the profit-taking. Like, Amazon produces nothing, but takes a huge cut. So to see any profit, the producers reduce quality, quantity, etc. Of course, Amazon just tightens the screws and takes whatever profit they do eke out.
It's disingenuous to say that Amazon produces nothing. They produce the environment that allows everyone to sell their products on the largest marketplace that has ever existed. They produce the servers, the hosting, the DNS, the security, the credit card processing, the shipping setup, and so much more. Plus they do produce actual products too. There's a lot of criticism that could be levied against Amazon, but not producing anything valuable isn't one of those criticisms.
Yes, all that is true, but there are also instances in which they are the middleman taking a cut out of proportion to their value add. It was just one example out of many.
This is also why we’re seeing a flurry of slightly different product names showing up on the market; for manufactured goods, to avoid accusations of bait and switch, companies are replacing “widget” with “widget ultra” which is really skimpified widget. Some are just doing “New formula!” and the original name instead.
I've been watching potato chip sizes consistently decline and prices go up or remain the same.
I was appalled when I first saw regular bags become 200g. I think it was Ms Vickies that did it first, and others slowly followed.
Costco chips remained pretty well priced during that transition, but now their prices are going up too. I should check their sizes as well, they used be around 650g if I recall correctly.
Just this past month, I now saw a familiar name brand (can't remember which it was) selling FAMILY SIZE bags that were a whole 220g.
It's insane.
Some of it is because of Nutritional Information panels, but I agree that most of it is just greed.
I saw a box of candies that was under 100g that as I child I would traditionally have eaten as a snack. The "suggested serving" size was significantly smaller than the box size in order to keep the "calories per serving" low. In order to keep us the ruse, the box is now called "a sharing box" and it said something like "Share with 6 friends!".
So, most of this is to be greedy, but some of it is to be deceitful.
It's showing up in all the things... the chicken breast packages used to be 1kg for $9, and in the short term they've increased to $15 or so for 650g. The prepared chopped salad (you can argue it's not a smart buy, bu it illustrates the differences) used to be 450g to 500g and you'd pay $4, now it's $6 and you get 365g.
Consistently across the whole shopping list I'm seeing smaller packages for significantly more money.
Food is getting so adulterated it is becoming cheaper and more satisfying to just cook everything from scratch. After using the homemade versions, I can't go back ... especially at the cost of pre-prepared stuff.
If you get deep into cooking it does actually become very easy. The most important thing is organizing the kitchen because I find that many people have tons of clutter. Once you have experience and a well organized kitchen cooking is usually less than an hour.
Another important tip is that it's usually best to stick to one kind of cuisine. It shouldn't be exact (like french, Spanish Italian) and it should be something vague like "Mediterranean/European", "India/south Asian", "East Asia (pretty much Japan, China, Korea)". Otherwise you will require so many ingredients and sauces it's impossible to keep track of.
Stop. Buying. This. Shit.
Yah... food is overrated.
Do meat next!!