Downgrading the Ingredients in our Food Items: 'Skimpflation' Hits Grocery Stores in Canada [Op-Ed]
Downgrading the Ingredients in our Food Items: 'Skimpflation' Hits Grocery Stores in Canada [Op-Ed]
Sylvain Charlebois discusses the subtle alteration in the nutritional composition of some products as manufacturing costs soar in the industry.
Why does it always have to be the consumer’s job to watch out for this crap? It’s exhausting going through everything looking for allergens, imagine doing so just to make sure the product you’ve been buying for years hasn’t changed to lower quality without warning.
Better solution - require that products have a front label stating their recipe has changed, and including a list of changes to it on the back. Quicker reference, easy as hell to tell when something changed.
Consumer protection really needs to be more robust. We shouldn’t let these companies have all the power to mess with our bodies on a whim without warning.
Especially when they have the money and ability to perfectly read the limits of public attention, or necessary severity of distress before drastic reaction. The general public are too focused on surviving and living to compete with companies who focus entire groups and technologies into finding people's blind spots and weaknesses.
It's a battle of minds and margins, where only one side has resources and power to affect change. Where the fuck are our representatives?
Yeah, that’s why we have government regulations in the first place. Because we don’t have the same level of resources or power to do anything about it that companies do.
We just need way better regulations. And really strong enforcement. Oh and fines that actually matter, like 10% of yearly profits for each infraction, no upper limit. If they can’t be pro-social, fine them into bankruptcy.
I've heard a similar argument in favor of allowing congress/elected officials to cast secret ballots on legislation. Lobbyists, corporations, etc. have plenty of time and money to review laws for minor tweaks they can request and bribe for their benefit, but the average voter can't spend much time at all on so much as looking at what bills are being voted on week by week. I don't know if it would actually have a positive effect and I'm not really endorsing the idea, but the parallel is interesting.
Perhaps a more straightforward approach would be to revive anti-trust law and actually enforce limits on company sizes while implementing protections against manipulative advertising and bait and switching. Maybe also ban corporations and corporate-aligned special interest groups from interacting with congress/representative bodies. Perhaps there should be a branch of government specifically for creating and enforcing regulations on law makers.
You know they will find a loophole like creating a new product and discontinuing the old one.
That’s fine, because it’s not sneaky changes to an existing product you’ve already vetted. It’s very obvious that it changed if it’s a whole new product.
That still works for me. It's usually allergens I'm looking for so if the product changes I know I have to confirm the new product it's not going to try to kill me like I do with any new product.
Why does it always have to be the consumer’s job to watch out for this crap?
It doesn't have to be. You are quite welcome to hire a professional to take over the task.
We shouldn’t let these companies have all the power to mess with our bodies on a whim without warning.
Likewise, you don't have to hire a professional to grow and prepare your meals for you. It is not that hard to do yourself.
Consumer protection really needs to be more robust.
Fair enough, but one thing you cannot hire away is democracy. If you really want this you need to put your boots to the ground to ensure it happens. It won't magically happen.
Restaurants too. you need 2 subs at Subway to feel full. you can eat an entire pizza at Dominos.
WTF did they do to the bread?
What's the matter? Do you find it displeasing when Subway counts the olives, lettuce pieces, and rotten frozen tomatoes? Why anyone would choose to eat at that filthy Subway store is beyond me. In Toronto, a cold cut sandwich now costs $13 before tip.
They can count all they want. It won't fill anybody.
I can get sub at a supermarket for 6-8$ and it's way more filling.
Sure.
Though tbf sandwiches are the easiest thing to make. Why people are getting something that costs under 4 dollars to make at home in under ten minutes and instead pay to have it made for 13$ and then complain about it but then keep going back is very bizarre to me. You’re paying a buck a minute for someone to slap separate, non cooked ingredients together for you. That’s 60 dollars a minute to just throw pieces of food into another form.
And you’re not even staying at subway to eat it. People get it to go and eat it anywhere else they could bring their home sandwiches to.
It's carbohydrate foam now. It used to be you mixed water, flour and yeast and let it sit for hours. Time is money, so now they force it to happen faster and the result is less flour and more bubbles = more profit.
This is encouraging me to eat less food products and focus more on just raw ingredients where there is no ingredients to skimp out on.
Until you go to Loblaws and find the overpriced overripe and expired produce they try to sell.
And that’s why they jacked up the price of every vegetable and fruit. A bushel of green options 3 years ago here was $0.79. It’s now $2.49. And they look meagre af.
They have every angle sewn up at this point.
A lot of people I know have noticed this. Not just in typical groceries, but in a lot of food products.
Usually they don't know what's going on, but I've heard plenty of complaints about the taste of things they buy. Even weird ones like one beer tasting like a cheaper brand.
The thing that always boggles my mind is seeing cheap materials in Canada. This is one of the highest cost of living places on Earth. We should expect that anything involving manual labour will be stupid expensive here... But materials? Basic ingredients? The minimum hourly wage in Canada higher than the average daily wage in a country like India. If raw materials really cost what people charge us, most of the world would suddenly become corpses laying unsheltered in the sun.
If I'm paying you over $20/hr, use the good stuff because the cost of ingredients or materials is going to be a rounding error on the bottom line!
Is this guy new?
They charges what they can get away with it and sell us the cheapest shit away with... the difference is the profit in their pocket.
Why would they sell us anything of high quality when they can sell us shit and we eat it. JuNk FoOd GooD, I CaNT HeLp It
If only we had some kind of organization to protect consumers from harmful corporate practices.
I'm getting so fucking tired of corporations running this country.
As greed soars in the industry, I think you mean.
The Canadian government's engagement in the inflation of prices for Canadians is linked to the ownership of stocks in grocery companies, like Loblaws, by numerous Canadian politicians – a verifiable fact.
WTF are those price? 11$ for cheezwiz? 9$ for jam?
Welcome to canada.
Corporate CEOs have taken the adage of shooting for the stars way too literally. At this point I believe they are trying to find the maximum possible price point people will pay for their products. Like seemingly everyone else in this country, they want their pound of flesh $$$.
both non essential products, people should vote with their money.
as manufacturing costs soar
Yeah fucking right. More like "as corporations begin running out of valid strategies for increasing profit margins literally every quarter for eternity". Those companies are making record profits. Hell, they probably used some of those record profits to pay for that title.
We have words for this already. Corporate greed, price gouging and lying come to mind. No need to dress it up as an inflation thing. X-flation is the x-gate of the 2020s
Normally corporate greed is met with "Fuck you. Don't be so greedy. You will accept this [lower] price or else."
Inflation is when that turns into "I know you are being greedy, but that is one stylish hat you are wearing, and for that reason I will gladly accept your [high] price!"