FF 45, Dont believe the hype ?:?!!

[slym2none]

The corporate food trick has been to decrease the portion size, while maintaining the price, to make it appear as if the price hasn't gone up.

 

Yep - try finding a 5-pound bag if sugar anymore. You can't, they are all 4-pounders, with no decrease in price from the 5-pound size.

 

Cookies get smaller, as well as less per package, while the package size stays the same. I'm looking at you, Oreos.

 

*sigh*

 

 

 

-slym

[vaillant]

I don’t know what’s the CPI but I could never eat hamburgers…

 

My dad was born in Italy, and he enjoys them, you just need to have a good one

 

I am amazed at the numbers of americans of italian heritage which I continue to discover here on the boards. – The hamburger thing has nothing to do with it anyway, I am hardly a food connoisseur but I never liked it… especially the sauces and things that you have to add

 

Oreo cookies still look weird to me: not used to black colored cookies!

[RockMyAmadeus]

I recommend the inflation-defying McChicken sandwich. Still one dollar after all these years, as long as you don't factor in the additional health insurance costs it will cause you.

 

We've had to start paying a little more for the double cheeseburger, but they somehow manage to keep cranking out that McChicken for a dollar. I avoid watching Soilent Green when eating one.

 

Whatever you do, don't let them pawn that McDouble thing with only one slice of cheese on you. That is not a double cheeseburger.

 

but i can't afford steak.

 

Sigh.

 

The corporate food trick has been to decrease the portion size, while maintaining the price, to make it appear as if the price hasn't gone up.

 

In the 2000's and prior, nearly every ice cream manufacturer sold ice cream in half gallon sizes (64 fluid oz.)

 

Since 2007 or so, almost all the manufacturers have reduced the size of the containers to 1.75 quarts (56 fluid oz.) or worse, 1.5 quarts (48 fluid oz.)

 

Same price.

 

While there are a few who have held the half gallon size, you now have to look for them.

 

I know you know this, Hamlet, but less quantity for the same price is a price hike.

 

And the exact same thing has happened at Big Food, along with other neato tricks (fillers) to convince people that they are getting the same thing, for the same price. Look at a Big Mac lately....?

 

CPI does not measure cost per Big Mac or McChicken; it measures cost per ounce(gram) of meat, flour, etc. Corporate tricks on size only work on the unsavy consumer not the CPI. Please see:

 

http://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/AverageRetailFoodAndEnergyPrices_USandMidwest_Table.htm

 

for proof.

 

The conversation here isn't about the CPI.

 

My response was to Hamlet's "inflation defying chicken sandwich!" claim.

 

But that does point out a very big flaw of the CPI: it doesn't do well with finished products, especially food products.

[Bookery]

The corporate food trick has been to decrease the portion size, while maintaining the price, to make it appear as if the price hasn't gone up.

 

Yep - try finding a 5-pound bag if sugar anymore. You can't, they are all 4-pounders, with no decrease in price from the 5-pound size.

 

Cookies get smaller, as well as less per package, while the package size stays the same. I'm looking at you, Oreos. *sigh* -slym

 

Just to keep on topic, an excellent example of this is comic books themselves. There were no inflation indexes back in the '40s, but had there been would they have been able to adjust for size vs. price differences? Comics remained at 10-cents for nearly 30 years... 1933 to 1961. But the pages counts went from 68 to 60 to 52 to (occasionally 44) to 36. Same 10-cent cover all along though.

 

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

The corporate food trick has been to decrease the portion size, while maintaining the price, to make it appear as if the price hasn't gone up.

 

Yep - try finding a 5-pound bag if sugar anymore. You can't, they are all 4-pounders, with no decrease in price from the 5-pound size.

 

Cookies get smaller, as well as less per package, while the package size stays the same. I'm looking at you, Oreos. *sigh* -slym

 

Just to keep on topic, an excellent example of this is comic books themselves. There were no inflation indexes back in the '40s, but had there been would they have been able to adjust for size vs. price differences? Comics remained at 10-cents for nearly 30 years... 1933 to 1961. But the pages counts went from 68 to 60 to 52 to (occasionally 44) to 36. Same 10-cent cover all along though.

 

 

Yes...the idea that prices remained static for that near-30 year time period is a false one. Yes, the printed cover price remained the same...but in 1938, almost every comic book published was 64 pages (68 with the covers)...by 1953, just about every standard comic book was 32 pages (36 with the covers.)

 

That's double in price in about 20 years.

[Hamlet]

Yeah, the bags got smaller when sugar prices went up a lot a few years ago.

 

Have you looked at sugar prices lately though? They've actually dropped back down a lot.

 

The 4-lb bag at Cub today was $1.99. That's cheaper than I remember it being in a long time.

 

Yep - try finding a 5-pound bag if sugar anymore. You can't, they are all 4-pounders, with no decrease in price from the 5-pound size.

 

Cookies get smaller, as well as less per package, while the package size stays the same. I'm looking at you, Oreos.

 

*sigh*

 

 

 

-slym

[Hamlet]

I know you know this, Hamlet, but less quantity for the same price is a price hike.

 

And the exact same thing has happened at Big Food, along with other neato tricks (fillers) to convince people that they are getting the same thing, for the same price. Look at a Big Mac lately....?

 

I'm not sure what you are insinuating about the Big Mac. It seems pretty much the same as it was when I was making them in 1989. I imagine that the meat has more quality issues, but its still the same amount of meat. The folks I order from seem to have a lot more trouble putting them together than I did, but what can you do.

 

The McChicken has been a monstrosity of food since they put it on the dollar menu. I think they changed from a mixture of white and dark meat mixed in with the fillers and chemicals to just white meat mixed in with the fillers and chemicals at some point, but I haven't noticed a significant difference in it for quite a few years.