Is your beer still twelve ounces? You know, regular cans of beer, LOL, not you tallboy drinkers. The reason I’m asking is that they’ve changed so many products to different sizes (read that SMALLER) than they used to be, I’m wondering what will be next? Your beer? YES! Budweiser has a new can design out, the “bowtie” and it holds not 12 ounces, but 11.3 ounces of beer.
What else have they downsized that might impact beer drinkers everywhere? Let’s close our eyes and envision a summer day, not a cloud in the sky, the ice chest full of your favorite beverage and you are about to throw a few links on the pit when you happen to look down at the package and see—
14 ounces. That’s right. FOURTEEN. Not the 16 ounces that used to make up the pound. I happened to notice this accidentally one day when I was comparing ingredients between different sausage types and it took a moment to sink in. I mean I know that this type of price manipulation has been going on for some time but you can usually tell when that’s happened. Who knows how long I’d been buying 14 ounces thinking I’d been getting a pound, and not for the same price either. The price has risen even though the size has shrunk. Hillshire Farms is guilty of the same practice.
You maybe feel like serving some cheese and crackers before the links come off the pit so you get the old box of Saltines down and don’t notice a thing, and that’s for good reason. The box is still the same size as it always was, but the “fresh stacks” inside the box have more air and less crackers. Fifteen percent less as a matter of fact.
Let’s suppose you’re going to serve some type of vegetable with your links and you don’t want to be fancy, just put something else out there to maybe soak up a bit of the beer. You don’t, after all, want your friends driving home drunk, so you decide you’ll open a can of corn because corn goes great with BBQ links, even if it’s not on the cob. Those cans used to hold 16 ounces. Not anymore. Corn, at least Libby’s brand is now 15 ounces and green bean even less, weighing in at 14.5 ounces.
Suppose you want to serve some ice cream for dessert? It is after all a favorite summer time treat. If you live somewhere they sell Blue Bell you’re in luck because Blue Bell still sells their ice cream in half gallon containers.
Most of the other brands do not as you can see here on Dryer’s seasonal pumpkin flavor. It’s only 1.5 quarts.
OK- we’ve finished up with the BBQ, maybe drink a few more beers and we get home and realize we’ve maybe drank a few more than was optimal for health and something didn’t mix quite right in our stomachs. Maybe it was the ice cream and the alcohol mix, who knows? Now we have to make a mad rush to the bathroom to hug a toilet and we retch up what will come up and we reach over to grab a wad of toilet paper to wipe our funky mouths with, and what do we grab? A roll that has less sheets than it used to, that’s what. A roll of Scott for example used to hold 115.2 sq. ft. Now it holds only 104.8 sq. ft.
We get through this day, the great time drinking beer with friends at a BBQ, the not so great time puking our guts out and all we want to do is go to bed and wake up in the morning and have a cup of coffee or twenty. Well guess what? Of course. Coffee used to come in 16 ounce cans, and besides doing away with the cans they’ve done away with the amount of coffee they put in the container now. Most coffee that used to come as a pound now comes in containers that hold only 10.3 ounces and of course is more expensive as well.
There are some brands that still give you what you expect, like Community Coffee, but as far as I know that’s basically a Southern brand and if you’re here in the states like I am, you may not be able to find it for sale. I’m in Texas though and it is readily available in all the stores so if I’m contemplating a hangover, I at least know I won’t pay more for the coffee to help me out of it than I should. It might cost more per ounce, but it won’t be a price I pay for something I think is the same size it’s always been because the container has been artfully redesigned.
I could make this post quite a bit longer because there are multitudes of products that have been downsized and either say nothing about the downsizing at all, or tout it as trying to help the consumer make better choices by claiming the smaller sizes are due to less calories etc. but I’m pretty sure you’ve all taken my point, so I’ll leave you with the same question I began with- is YOUR beer still 12 ounces?
