Your groceries: Smaller, dearer
Many products on supermarket shelves are getting smaller, but we are paying more for them.
New data from Statistics New Zealand shows that the typical size of many commonly bought items is shrinking.
Statistics NZ tracks grocery items through its price monitoring for the consumer price index (CPI).
Senior manager of prices, accommodation and construction Jason Attewell said the typical size of a block of cheese had dropped from 1 kilogram to 900 grams, while the price increased by $2.50 over the past 10 years, on a non-inflationadjusted basis.
The size of a standard block of butter had dropped from 500g to 400g, while doubling in price from $2.08 in 2006 to $5.05 in 2017, and shampoo had shrunk from 400ml to 350ml.
Attewell said that in 2016 canned pineapple shrank from 439g to 432g and novelty chocolate bars became smaller.
In 2015, instant coffee shrank from 100g to 90g, but cost $6.13 this year compared with $4.43 in 2006, and a typical block of chocolate dropped from 220g to 200g, but costs $4.08 now compared with $3.27 in 2006.
Pasta sauce had also dropped in size from 575g to 500g.
Sometimes items get bigger. This year a typical bag of sweets has gone from 200g to 220g, as the price of sugar fell.
‘‘We do notice these things and adjust for them,’’ Attewell said. ‘‘Every time we put out the CPI people go ‘That’s not right; [the] price is going up more than that,’ and that’s a perception bias. They’re not taking into account that things go down in price, too.’’
Attewell said ‘‘shrinkflation’’ was discovered as part of the CPI because when products changed, they needed new barcodes. If the size of a product dropped but the price remained the same, that would be reflected as an increase in the cost of food, he said.
When a new phone was released with better features, but at the same price as a phone the year before, that was reflected as a price drop.
Attewell said, going back a few years, large orange juice bottles had shrunk from 3L to 2.4L to 2.8L; the cheapest available bread option had reduced from 700g to 600g; and some icecream flavours went from 2L packets to 1.6L.