Very irritating! I bought Nestle’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips to make fudge. Not sure about all their chips, but the Semi-Sweet bags are still 12 oz. I keep thinking those will decrease on size, too.

I use the ghiradelli semi-sweet chips for fudge, they are 10z, one bag has never been enough. About five years ago, my Mom was "helping" me with Christmas preparations, didn't measure and only used one bag :(

I'll definitely keep watching the bag sizes.

I'm just glad you noticed. As busy as I am this time of year, I'm not sure I'd have seen an ounce difference in the bag measurement - will start being more observant.

Yes, I not only need to keep looking at bag size, but I have to look at all the ingredients, even if I have bought them for years.

There's shrinkflation, where amounts are reduced, and also skimpflation, where ingredients are skimped on - both in order to keep prices from rising and angering consumers too much.

And I've seen reporting over the past couple years now that some big food producers appear to have been flat out price gouging, and trying to blame it on inflation.

It’s so easy not to notice. I just checked my jar of marshmallow creme to make sure it’s still 7 oz. That will be the next to shrink down!

The other day at the "no frills" discount grocer, 500 ml. of raspberry jam was $5.59 ... and and a litre was ... $6.59.

Go figger!

Son likes their store-brand chocolate chips, and their 2.25 kg. package at a fairly high price, is still a lot cheaper per gram, lasts a long time (but in summer, better keep the main bag in the frig, even in these northern climes).

By the way - do you know that global warming is happening in our northern areas at about three times the rate in the areas closer to the equator? Polar bears, who depend on sea ice, may well be an endangered species.

ole joyful

So, the jam price thing is because it's not the actual quantity of jam that you're paying for, but the jar, crate, handling, distribution, shelving, etc. The smaller jar might fit your cupboard and lifestyle better, and be a better choice, but the double jar doesn't cost them much more to put in front of you. In this case, choice at a reasonable price is a win for the consumer.

Re chocolate chips, for another thread, I looked up all the quantities Nestle offers for semi-sweet regular chips. My local big chain supermarket has four or five sizes on the shelves, always, including both 10 oz. and 12 oz. The Toll House recipe on the bag calls for 12 oz,, just as the Fantasy Fudge (originally on the Jet-Puffed jar) calls for 12 oz. Some stores only stock 10 oz, and I asked The Expert what he thought. He is super tight about exactitude in ingredients, and I expected to hear about buying two 10 oz. bags, or buying five and reapporioning them to four 10 oz. sets, if he couldn't get 12 or 24 oz. With a vocal shrug, instead, he said, ”You just have fewer chips in your cookies, They'll be fine.” Could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather! Obviously that wouldn't do for the fudge!

I ordered a beer at a restaurant recently and they brought me a can. When I poured the can into a glass it seemed oddly small, and it was, at just 11.5 oz.

or when you need 12 oz for the bag recipe and it comes in a 16 oz, so you have to get another bag if you want another trip around the world.

Perhaps the new shrunk bags are in response to the apparent pending cocoa shortage?

Sherry, I don't understand the problem. Whether the packages are 10 oz or 9 oz, you still need two packages for a recipe that uses 12 oz.

PS - this item listed on Amazon comes in a 10 oz package. Maybe that's an old spec.

At least package sizes are adjustable. When once common ingredients disappear, things dicey. I cannot make cheese blintzes that look or taste right without fresh hoop cheese. It used to be the most common cheese becuase it was easy for shopkeepers to make can cut. In the Midwest, they still sell agee hoop cheese, but that's totally different. So then, after successfully making ricotta and mozzarella, both of which I can easily buy in exceptional quality, I asked cheese experts how to make hoop cheese and they couldn't. Finally, I found a sort-of recipe on a difficult Canadian website, which after I pored over it many times, I kind of figured out, and with the addition of a sous vide immersion circulator and a small cheese press (luckily it's somewhat decorative in a functional way), I have been able to make sufficiently good hoop cheese to make proper blintzes. But what a pain for a simple peasant dish!

The one that catches me is when a company has two packages that look very similar but are a fraction different in size. Why??? Ghirardelli, why do you make some of your bars 4oz, some 3.5oz, and some like 3.17oz? Can't you just make them all 4oz like the baking bars?

Totally sucks. I think we just can't win. It's going to be more expensive, it's going to be smaller and more expensive, or it's just going to be smaller. No winning.

I feel your pain. My son loves a chocolate bar called a curly wurly. I found some in a shop last week. They must only be a third of the size that they were when I left England lol.

Ah. Yes. Candy. My father complained about the same thing with 3 Musketeers bars. When I was young they weren't large and were chocolate flavored. In my father's youth, there were three good sized pieces, in chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Hence the ”3”.

My market has 10 ounce EnjoyLife bags. They must be switching to 9 and no doubt keep the same price.

I got lucky this year with a new-to-me chip brand. And cheaper. Same market. Checks all the same allergen boxes.

Excellent chocolate.

One bad thing i had happen...I had house guests over Thanksgiving. I picked up a big bag of pistachios in their shell. For snacking and to use in a shortbread. Half the bag are so tight in the shell they are hard to open. Tiny and hard. Way to salty. Bland flavor. Ditched that project.

@plllog I was just telling someone about my memory of 3 Musketeer Bars being 3 flavors, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. I was an only child, but had neighbors, a boy and girl close to me in age. I remember when we had to split a 3 musketeers bar and none of us wanted the strawberry section.

I hate the price hikes, the executives in those companies are getting richer by the second. I don't mind chocolate chip bags getting smaller, when I do make cookies I use about 1/4 of what the recipe calls for and 2-3 times the walnuts or pecans. I also cut back on the amount of sugar in the recipe.

I also saw a news story the food manufacturers are skimping out on key ingredients and/or substituting cheaper ingredients in their formulas. This is on top of shrinking the packages. It’s so frustrating.

Sherry, I was going to make some, but having a hard time finding marshmallow creme.

Marilyn, I ran into that one year. I tend to buy in October or November even though I just made yesterday. I am very late this year.

How are all of the animals doing? I miss hearing about them. I just made our little mutt, 15lbs, Chihuahua,/Min Pin mix (His view of himself is Rottweiler crossed with Dobermann), "Three Ingredient Dog cookies". They are peanut butter, oatmeal processed into coarse flour, and canned plain pumpkin. He loves them!

Is marshmallow creme seasonal? The big chain grocery, good place for national brand items, has Jet Puffed 7oz., and to the point, 13 oz. for $0.20 more.

You can also make your own, though I don't know if you need the gum, etc, to make the fudge. The closest I’ve come to it is Italian meringue, but that was pretty easy.

I may be in the minority but I think reducing packaged amounts of foods is long overdue. Pricing per pound of bulk items like meats, vegetables and fruit is still transparent. Boxed foods like cereals and candy, snacks, etc, have always been very expensive by weight and now people are realizing just how much they cost per unit of measurement. I am convinced that decades of very cheap foods has contributed to the obesity epidemic in first world countries.

My post is about packages and cans of INGREDIENTS. It is a math lesson now to use old recipes. Sometimes they do not make the items any more. All of the cans and packages are a different amount now than they were. Occasionally, the smaller amount is okay, but most of the time I have to buy two and store the remainder.

The chocolate chips from 12 to 10 to 9oz. Cans from 16 to 15 To 14.5 or 32 to 28 ozs. One small can of pineapple rings,5 in a can, fit perfectly for my Pineapple upside down cake. Now only four come in a can and it doesn’t look right. So bigger can and leftover pineapple.

Semi-sweet chips are still 12 oz. Maybe the other flavors were always smaller. I don't know as semi-sweet is always recommended for cookies so it's all I ever buy.

Have you not noticed that your TP roll only goes about 2/3 of the way across the TP holder? First, they made the inner tube larger and larger, then they started making the rolls narrower.

I have to buy dairy free semi-sweet chocalate chips they were 10oz and the new bag was 9oz.

I never put an entire bag of chips in anything I made....there was always at least an ounce of taste testing!!!

Merry Christmas all!

FWIW, there's a guy who tracks shrinkflation on his website, Mouse Print...

https://www.mouseprint.org

Tuna fish, Starkist, is now 4 oz.!

Helman's Mayo, small jar was 16 oz., now 15 oz.

Obviously as costs get passed onto the consumer either the package price goes up or the package gets smaller. Or a combination of the two. But I get what Sherry’s saying, it’s frustrating when a package has become a standard unit in recipes over time, and then changes size. I get the objection.

Where I don’t get the objection is in bulk items. Who cares that sugar is now in 4 pound bags instead of 5? How often does a recipe call for 5 pounds of sugar? Or “half gallons” of ice cream keep shrinking? It’s an occasional unhealthy treat, I’m more likely to pay $5 for 46 ounces than $7 for 64.

Related, but it’s really important to look at unit price. It’s been so ingrained in us that bigger is cheaper, but I’m often finding that the difference is just pennies, if that. And even those pennies aren’t really saved if you buy more than you’re likely to use.

Foodonastump, Yes! that is the point. I alway look at the unit price. Example: Advil at WM; The large super economy size is more per pill than the next size down. That doesn't bother me.

Four pounds of sugar doesn't bother me. Flour sizes do not matter, etc. Now I do not like the fact that Baker's Chocolate changed from the paper wrapped 1oz chunk to the flat sheet of chocolate that is hard to break into 1oz sections, and frequently comes broken from the store.....

It's not a real complaint. Staples are staples and the bag size really isn't an issue, but I like to empty my canisters and clean them between, so with the four pound bag of sugar, there's never that frisson of delight of filling the canister. :(

I couldn't deal when Baker's changed to bars. That's when I started using European batons or pastilles, which the stores sold in take-out containers, broken up from bulk boxes. During the height of the pandemic, between food handling restrictions, supply chain issues, and inflation, these weren't available, and the price for individual use packages was exhorbitant. I rediscovered Baker's and for many homey, America recipes, actually prefer it, bar and all, They do seem easier to break, nowadays. ;)

And I like the three quart ice cream tubs (I don't think those ever were half gallons, but I discovered them (that brand) just a couple of years ago). They seem to be just the right amount, and easy to scoop from the bottom without getting all sticky.

I get confused now over the new Bakers chocolate sizing. It's kind of annoying.

And I always compare unit prices when shopping - I'll use the calculator on my phone when I'm at the store too.

I've also noticed that larger amounts aren't always the best deal.

The new Baker's bar is the same 4 oz. It just fits the shelving to compete with other brands. Most of my recipes, like for brownies, use a whole bar. The bar has 16 rectangles, so each ounce has four pieces. They have deep channels and break pretty cleanly, though I have scales if there should be a problem.

I wonder if some of you having issues with the Baker's bars have tried it recently? I didn't like it at first either, but when I started buying them more recently, I really liked them. Perhaps they've changed for the better? I do remember trying to cut up the old chunks and what a pain that was! For fractions of an ounce, the bars are much better!!

The thing is, my recipes used either one or two of the old chunks of Baker's Chocolate I never had to break or use part of one like I do now.

ETA: It has been years since I bought a bar. I just switched over to using cocoa. If I have to measure, I had rather measure a powder, than guess at a bar. The old style, I just unwraped one chunk...

I use cocoa more than baking chocolate too. I guess what confused me last time I used some was the serving size shown on the front of the box is 1/2 ounce - 2 pieces.

And I've never had a recipe that called for less than 1 ounce of chocolate

That's weird! A standard serving size of chocolate is one ounce.

One chunk of old Baker's is the same as 4 divisions (rectangles) of the current bar, which equals 1 oz. A lot of my old recipes call for half an ounce, so maybe that's why the front lists the info for half an ounce. Much easier with the new bar, if less so for the whole chunk users. Weighing out and breaking/cutting pastilles is a pain. The bar is easy. :)

I quit using Baker's chocolate years ago in favor of the pound plus bars from Trader Joe's. I don't think the extra cost for Baker's is worth it. My baked goods come out just as good if not better with that super dark stuff in those pound + bars.

And don't even get me started on tuna fish!!!!

1 month later...

I don't think it's been noted that the Baker's chocolate package used to be 8 ounces, and now it's half that - or did I miss it?

I don't doubt it, but I remember getting 4oz. way back when.

This wouldn't be a problem if recipes were written using weights. I've rarely come across a recipe simply calling for a package without specifying the quantity, eg '1 x400 gr. tin of tomatoes'. If you know the old size of a pack can you write in the weight into your recipes and then buy accordingly?

Wrong thread Jay?

ETA: There is no Joe or Jimmy posting on here about quanities of products. What ARE you and OllieJane talking about. Either explain or delete your post.

It's partisan nonsense, of course.

Thank you Carol, but I still do not understand the post. It does not relate to any post on this thread. I have no idea who the Joe and Jimmy are that Jay and Ollie and now Woodrose are refering to. They have not posted on this thread about the companies changing the sizes of packages and cans.

I can only assume the Jay, Ollie, and Woodrose are crazy?

Yup! Floral, I do that all the time—look up package sizing, era appropriate, and add to recipes. Mind you, most of these aren't ”recipes” per se, but Great-Aunt Sally told Mom over the phone 40 years ago, scribbled on a coffee stained envelope. And it's always some special thing that you'd never think of from general cooking knowledge. When I scribble, I do try to note measures. Can weights are easy. For onions, oranges, etc, if I didn't weigh them, I'll at least say tennis ball, baseball, softball, or similar.

In this thread, however, it's not an issue of knowing the weights. An ounce of Baker's is exactly that. I used to get the small package, IIRC, that's the same weight as the current bar, wheras Carol got twice the size. Either works. The thing is many recipes are sized to use multiples on 1 large egg (there's a legal definition for what that is, though yolk size and other characteristics have changed over time). Similarly, a lot of popular recipes are optimized to a whole package of something. If shrinkflation gave us 5oz. baking chocolate, instead of 4 ot 8 oz., it would be difficult and wasteful!