You’re not imagining things ...!

THE products you buy really are getting smaller

You may have noticed that some items in shops are shrinking: maybe a tin of tuna was previously enough for three sandwiches, not two? Or that washing powder lasted 20 washes and now only 17? You are not imagining things! This is called ‘shrinkflation’. Shrinkflation is when products slowly shrink in size but keep the same prices. Some brands do this because of rising market prices. When prices rise, some brands cannot afford to retain both the product size and the price of said product.

Scared of losing customers, they shrink the product to maintain the profits. This is why there is so much empty space in crisp packets now.

Some people say that this is because of the fall in the value of the pound due to Brexit, but the Office of National Statistics says that shrinkflation has been going on for at least five years and has affected more than 2,500 products in the UK alone. However, the term shrinkflation was only coined in 2017. So were those companies involved trying to hide this scaling down?

One of the most famous cases of shrinkflation is the Toblerone bar. This popular chocolate bar had to increase the size of the gaps in the bar because of rising ingredient prices.

In a statement on the Toblerone Facebook page the company said it ‘had to make a choice between changing the look of the bar or changing the price’ and they ‘changed the shape to keep it affordable’.

But pupils at PGS say that this was ‘not unreasonable’ and that they ‘understand why they did it’.

It is clear that Toblerone have paved the way when it comes to shrinkflation: just let us know so we all have the satisfaction of saying, ‘in my day…’ TOM CLARKE