We all know prices are rising. Inflation has reached 40-year highs and overall prices have risen over 8%, but that’s only part of the story. From rising gas prices to a supermarket prices spiking up over 13% to prices on staples like butter and flour rising nearly 25%. Even more under the radar is the gnawing sense that we’re getting less product for more money. That’s not your imagination. That’s shrinkflation and it’s very real. Shrinkflation can look like products with suspiciously smaller amounts selling for the same price as before, or the products themselves might be changing in what's sometimes called “skimpflation”: cough syrup that’s diluted to half the active strength, milk, cream, and sugar in your favorite ice cream being replaced with cheaper bulking agents like corn syrup and whey protein, or 2-ply facial tissues that are being sold at the same price, even though they're now 1-ply. However they have to do it, manufacturers and supermarkets are going to make money, and apparently they don't care how they have to cheat you to do it. Thankfully, advocates exist to help consumers push back against companies that engage in shrinkflation. Mouse Print — named for the tiny print often found on packaging that’s so tiny “only a mouse could read it” — alerts consumer to examples of companies trying sell less for more. Examples would be bags of dog food that shrank from 50 to 44 pounds or bottles of detergent that look similar but come with less detergent. More and more companies are adding size names to breakfast cereal boxes, cookies, and chips — "Large Size," "Party Size," "Family Size." In a sense, this is a very clever ploy by manufacturers to teach shoppers to buy by size name rather than by net weight. Now you can go to Mouse Print and check out products you think might be shrinking.
