The Great Shrinkflation Swindle: Why Your Chips Are Mostly Air

In this episode of Deep Dives in the Shallow End, we take a hilariously bleak look at "shrinkflation"—the sneaky corporate tactic of giving you less product for the same price. From bite-sized Snickers to vanishing toilet paper sheets, we explore how capitalism’s favorite magic trick is shrinking your snacks, your soap, and your sanity. We unpack the history, the absurd excuses, and the everyday frustrations of living in a world where even your chocolate bunnies are on a diet. Tune in for laughs, rage, and a little hope that we can fight back—one tiny Toblerone at a time.

Transcript

Recording from the bottom of an already half-empty bag of "family-sized" chips—where the crumbs of capitalism somehow managed to defy gravity and settle above the air pocket—it’s your host, Donovan!

Hey folks, welcome back to Deep Dives in the Shallow End, where we dissect modern life’s minor tragedies and always come to the same, disheartening conclusion: capitalism wins, you lose -- lather, rinse, repeat. 

I’m your not-so-expert host, Donovan, here to guide you through this modern landscape where economic trends squeeze both your wallet and your will to live. 

And today, we’re diving into "shrinkflation." 

Yes, shrinkflation: it’s like regular inflation, but more gaslighting, less honesty, and just enough corporate doublespeak to make you question whether your hands have grown bigger or if your Snickers bar is truly now bitesize.

So, grab a drink, and if you feel like it’s suddenly evaporated faster than your enthusiasm for modern life—congratulations, you’ve just experienced shrinkflation firsthand. Let’s dig in.

Alright, let’s start with the basics: What exactly is shrinkflation? 

Well, imagine a place where everything feels like it’s the same price, but what you’re getting is about as satisfying as a hug from a Protestant dad. 

It’s a price hike in disguise—a cruel magician's trick where the product you used to love vanishes little by little, but the cost remains the same. 

You open a bag of chips, and you’d swear they used to be filled to at least the halfway mark. 

Now you’re greeted by a burst of air and a handful of chips doing their best impression of survivors huddling for warmth on a deserted island. 

Like that little cartoon dog whose house is burning around him, you tell yourself, "This is fine." But it’s not fine. Nothing will ever be fine! Sorry a bit of my inner monologue slipped out there; good thing you heard me on a nice day.

Shrinkflation is capitalism’s sleight of hand, a corporate magic trick where the ace up their sleeve is smaller portions for the same price, and we’re all the rubes in the audience, politely clapping while our wallets are picked clean. 

Remember when toilet paper rolls used to actually fill the holder? Well now, I'm hand separating the two-ply like some pathetic dirtbag, so I don't have to decide between cleanliness and alimentation; although, I do now find myself having to clean under my fingernails more often.

Let’s take a step back in time for a moment. Shrinkflation isn’t new; it’s been around longer than your dad's penchant for putting holes in the drywall every time the Red Sox lose; that house is one bad inning from being condemned. 

The term was first coined in the 1960s, a simpler time when people were blissfully unaware of corporate nickel-and-dime tactics or demographic privilege. 

Back then, they called it "downsizing" or "lightening the load." But they were actually just dumping a load of BS right on our heads. 

No matter the time or moniker, shrinkflation has always been the same song and dance: increase profits, maintain prices, and convince people they were just imagining things. 

Now we're all like Oliver at McDonald's looking at the ten fries that come in a large portion, pleading "Please, sir, can I have some more?" to a 16-year-old named Dakota who’s got us by the short ones; he’s lucky my shoulder is stiff today otherwise I’d wipe that smug grin right off his face. Enjoy the power of ruling over your little fiefdom that is the River Road McDonalds in Sandusky, Ohio while you can, because you’re only a few years away from the soul-crushing part of life that is back pain, bad knees, and an enlarged prostate! That said, I will kowtow and kiss the ring if I can get a free sweet n’ sour sauce, my lord.

While there are countless examples of this, I will talk about some of what I believe to be the most egregious examples. Not surprisingly, most will have to do with sugar and junk food. 

So let’s go way back to 2021, where the beloved Cadbury Cream Egg got caught in the crosshairs of shrinkflation. In my house, it used to be a decadent symbol of indulgence—now, it's more like a sad reminder that good things never last, like youth, hope, and the American empire! 

The weight of a Cream Egg dropped from 39 grams to 34 grams, and yes, that missing 5 grams might sound trivial until you’re trying to just get through your nightly cry sesh with chocolate and find out that capitalism has struck you even here...in the candy aisle...when all you wanted was to avoid having to yet again increase your SSRIs. I guess it's another trip to see Doctor Walderbach!

And I’m just gettin’ started! Shrinkflation has hit everything from cereal to soap. Remember when you could get a box of cereal that could double as an adorable makeshift fort for your cat? 

Now you’re lucky if there’s enough cereal to shovel dry into your face while watching a single YouTube listicle of the "top 5 fun things to do in Delaware", that understandably stops at 3...which was a stretch to begin with.  

The air-to-cereal ratio is akin to that of men to women at hedonism 2, and the frustration of both may lead you into new territories. 

I’ve opened a box of Frosted Flakes that looked like it was vacuum-sealed for freshness but somehow had the gravitational weight of a lunar rover— inside were fewer flakes than I get on my shoulders after a weekend in bone-dry Albuquerque during allergy season. 

At this point, if Tony the Tiger utters anything other than a dry, "they're mediocre," then he's begging for a knuckle sandwich – once my shoulder gets better.

There are some international examples too. The British Office for National Statistics reported in 2022 that over 200 products experienced shrinkflation. McVities Digestive Biscuits lost 100 grams per pack, and Andrex toilet paper rolls quietly shed 21 sheets. 

And in Japan, instant noodles weren't safe, as Cup Noodles reduced portion sizes while blaming rising wheat costs. 

Back stateside, where it matters and we don’t use communist measurements like grams – the many exceptions aside -- Gatorade bottles went from 32 ounces to 28 ounces, with the company hilariously claiming it was for "aerodynamic design.”

It's the same excuse I used for shaving my head, and NOT because I started looking like George Costanza rocking a tonsure. 

So, this is not a handful of greedy executives cutting corners; it’s an entire culture of economic half-truths. 

And do companies ever proudly announce, "We’ve downsized our portions, but hey, at least we’re honest about it"? 

No, Instead, they launch campaigns about "streamlining" or "responding to consumer preferences." 

Ah yes, my preference is definitely to pay the same price for less. I also enjoy getting a swift kick in the groin and being charged for that. 

But even Mistress Katarina is cutting minutes from sessions these days, and I have to pay extra for a safe word. I just can't afford all my creature comforts anymore.

But companies tell us that the change is about "portion control" or "less waste." Really? You’re doing this for my health? 

These corporations are as concerned with our well-being as the Hapsburgs were with familial boundaries.

And the snack aisle isn’t the only casualty here. 

The restaurant industry is part of the conspiracy, too. 

Suddenly, your favorite noodle dish from that Vietnamese joint seems to have gone from a hearty pho to an exasperated, WHAT THE PHO? 

Now I'm paying 14 dollars for six noodles, two pieces of meat and a shot glass of broth – 

these are POW rations at Four Seasons prices!

Even more amusing—

though amusing like slipping on a banana peel and landing in that pile of dog excrement that my neighbor is going to pick up right after she grabs a bag from her house....yesterday—

is how this extends into the world of beverages. 

Remember when a "pint" of beer actually meant a full pint? Now you're handed a glass that somehow looks the same, but you swear there's less of it.  

Perhaps it’s the way they’ve thickened the glass at the bottom to reduce how much beer they’re actually pouring. But it’s fine, right? 

Because it comes with a slice of artisanal orange peel or some other such nonsense that lets them slap on an extra $4. 

Thanks, but I'll stick to the Natty Ice -- it’s always been for us degenerates, but at least they never tried to make us think otherwise.

The dark irony here is that shrinkflation is often touted as a way to avoid raising prices directly. 

In times of high inflation, companies are reluctant to be seen as increasing costs—so instead, they reduce the size of the product, assuming we won’t notice. 

It’s the ultimate gaslighting campaign. Imagine buying a new car, but each year, the steering wheel gets a little smaller, the seat starts to resemble a bar stool, and eventually, you just have a bicycle with no seat. It will get you where you need to go, but with great discomfort for the uninitiated.

And because I never like to be far from the snack isle, let’s take soft drinks. A standard 2-liter bottle has slowly but surely crept down to 1.75 liters in some cases. They tell us this is for "eco-friendly reasons" to cut back on plastic, but here’s a novel idea: if you want to save plastic, maybe try not using it in every. single. thing you make.

But no, apparently, it’s just the soda. Don’t worry—the plastic-wrapped plastic fork you get with your plastic-wrapped takeout order will still be included in the plastic bag.

Let’s not forget the patron saint of shrinkflation, Toblerone. 

Oh yes, they got away with reducing the number of iconic peaks in their chocolate bar by spreading them farther apart. They gave us less chocolate by just putting more air in the middle, like some avant-garde performance piece on human disappointment. 

Although disappointment applies to essentially any piece of avant-garde art. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that they did this right around the same time that cocoa prices went up. 

It was between giving us less product while continuing the human rights abuses perpetrated on cocoa farmers in West Africa or take a hit to their bottom line. 

As you can imagine, the cocoa farmers are still toiling in utter poverty and our blood sugar levels are becoming concerningly normal.  I WON'T HAVE IT!

Speaking of snacks, let’s talk potato chips for the fourth time today. I mean, they say talk about what you love, and it will never feel like work. But did you know that the average bag of chips is now only about 40% full of actual chips; not that they were ever an overflowing cornucopia before. 

The rest is just nitrogen-filled air to keep the chips fresh and reduce breakage, or so they claim. But the only thing breaking here is my will to live every time I pay $4.99 for a bag that seems to weigh less than my optimism after checking my bank account. 

And the kicker? Brands now boast about “fresher packaging,” as if that somehow makes up for the fact that you could choke the remaining Black Rhinos with the amount of missing chips sold over the last two weeks alone. 

Actually, that may not be proving my point the way I want, being that they are on the brink of extinction. But hey, that sounds like another cheery episode you can look forward to in the future!

I suppose I can meander over to the cleaning products aisle for a brief moment. Dish soap, floor cleaner, all of it—shrinking while prices stay stagnant. They say it’s “more concentrated,” but what they really mean is that it’s more concentrated in the sense that you’re concentrating harder to make it last as long as it used to. 

And let’s talk detergent. Once upon a time, you could do a solid 30 loads of laundry with a standard bottle. Now that same bottle has been cleverly re-engineered—no, not to be more efficient, but to only give you enough detergent for 20 loads, if you’re lucky. But they have made the label shinier, yet minimalistic, to give it a veneer of class and exclusivity. 

It's like trying to entice me to eat haggis. The answer was no before, and just because it's on a Waterford crystal platter doesn't make me want to eat your mishmash of oatmeal and spiced lungs, thanks.

And back to candy! As the holidays are upon us we can look forward to shrinkflation hitting those treats as well. Chocolate Santas, Easter Bunnies—all a little smaller each year. I’m waiting for the day my Easter Bunny is just a chocolate foot and a note that says, “Times are tough, kid.” It’s funny how they always seem to use economic hardship as an excuse, but somehow their profit margins keep getting bigger. It's very similar to how I supplement my income through the cancer research donation jar at my register. What can I say? The rent keeps going up and daddy’s gotta wet his beak.

Shrinkflation is a dance between the consumer and corporations, like a tango where we’re always stepping on our own feet, and our partner is picking our pocket while we try to smile for the camera, or at least that's what happened to me when I went to Buenos Aires.

And as bleak as it seems, we’re not powerless. It might feel like a David vs. Goliath battle—but let’s not forget, David had a stone and a hell of an arm. In our case, our "stone" is awareness. The more we know, the more we can call out these practices, demand transparency, and support companies that respect our intelligence and our money -- or at least do so in a more convincing way. Flattery will get you everywhere.

And let’s not forget that the history of consumer advocacy has actually yielded results. Remember when tuna cans got smaller and smaller, and consumers finally took notice? Well, neither do I, but I read about it. Apparently, enough outcry eventually led to changes, and companies had to adjust. Sure, it’s rare, and yes, it’s exhausting to have to fight for every ounce of fairness, but sometimes, just sometimes, the Goliath of greed takes a hit. And what do we have to show for it now? Larger cans of mercury-filled fish that I still don't want to eat. Now, if we can get Toblerone back on board, you will see a happy man.

But let’s be honest—as we sit here munching on our 80%-air-and-20%-Ruffles, now with deeper ridges for improved aerodynamics, while sipping on a 1.75-liter bottle of "eco-friendly" Pepsi Max, the truth is we’re all just trying to get by. Shrinkflation is just another reminder that capitalism is a masterclass in adaptation, always finding new ways to win while we thank them for the opportunity to be losers.

Thanks for listening, folks; it means the world to me. Take care yourselves and others and remember -- if you feel like you’re getting less of everything these days, it’s because you probably are. But don’t worry—with me, you ALWAYS get what you pay for -- and the price is juust right.

I do hope you'll join me on the next episode.