10 Foods That Have Suffered From Shrinkflation

When you visit the grocery store, you want the best bang for your buck — the most value you can get for the hard-earned dollars you spend. But there's an ever-increasing challenge to your shopping routine — you might not know it, but you're battling "shrinkflation."

Shrinkflation is when companies cut (or, you know, shrink) the amount of a certain product — or volume per unit — without changing the price. It's an insidious approach to giving us less for our money. It's grocery items that have been reduced to smaller sizes while the price remains the same. It's subtle changes in packaging designed to trick us into not noticing the difference in the amount of product. 

According to CBS News, shrinkflation has affected ⅓ of our top consumer grocery items in recent years, costing you more at the store without you being aware of it. Popular products that fill your grocery cart such as coffee, ice cream, cereal, and beer are all part of this tactic as producers try to convince you everything is the same as it always has been. Who is playing the shrinkflation game and how can you recognize it? It all comes down to the basics. Here are 10 foods that have fallen victim to shrinkflation. 

The earliest examples of shrinkflation come from the coffee industry. Up until 1988, ground coffee was traditionally sold in cans with a product weight of 1 pound, allowing for the consumer to compare prices between various brands easily. Later that year, industry stalwart Chock full o'Nuts reduced their can size to 13 ounces while keeping packaging the same as before. Industry leaders Maxwell House and Folgers quickly followed suit, eventually arriving at today's offerings of as little as a meager 9.6 ounces per can.

Soon after this historic conversion, the traditional "one pound of coffee" in a can began to change. Parent companies began using bags to package their product, allowing them to vacuum seal the packaging to have it appear completely full rather than having the traditional cans that had begun to look underfilled inside. Today, more than two-thirds of retail coffee is sold in bags instead of cans.

Nestlé is the biggest coffee maker in the world, producing Nescafé coffee and distributing Starbucks brands worldwide. In 2025, the company has plans to raise prices and shrink packaging across the globe. Watch for price increases and net product reductions coming to the shelves in your grocery store soon.

Who doesn't like ice cream – even scoopable ice cream in a plastic bag? According to the International Dairy Foods Association, only 3% of the population, so it's no surprise that the ice cream industry has embraced shrinkflation in a food category that reaches the masses.

For decades, half gallon was a standard measure when it came to packaging this delicious dessert treat. All ice cream cartons looked basically the same — a rectangle-shaped block that opened up to that soft creamy goodness inside. As with most commodities, the cost of the dairy needed to produce ice cream has risen in recent years, but manufacturers have used this as an excuse to reduce the amount of ice cream in the carton rather than simply raise prices accordingly. Most of the top brands, including Breyer's and Tillamook, now package their product in 48 ounce rather than 64 ounce tubs, leaving the consumer to pay what is the same price as before for up to 1 cup less of actual product.

Another top-selling brand, Häagen-Dazs, has dropped its traditional pint serving to only 14 ounces — no surprise, considering that this brand is also owned by Nestlé, perpetrators of the aforementioned coffee shrinkflation. All this in packaging that is virtually indistinguishable from the original 16-ounce pint tubs used in the past.

Another product category guilty of shrinkflation is the dry cereal group. According to a Lending Tree survey, this breakfast meal category has the second highest rate of shrinkflation occurrence, with almost 50% of its packaging downsized in the last five years alone. Labels have often changed in this process, with terms such as "Giant Size" and "Family Size" representing ambiguous amounts of product that can be lessened randomly, with no fear of reprisals, by huge companies such as General Mills and Kellogg's.

The breakfast industry has also come up with a unique approach to disguising shrinkflation. Obviously, dry cereal boxes are often much larger shelf items than a typical can of beans or jar of pickles, so they are at the mercy of needing to fit on grocery store shelves set to a specific size. It's easy to picture a wall of cereal boxes filling an entire aisle in the stores we shop in, so how does a company incorporate their reduced package size without it standing out as obviously smaller? Simple: It makes the boxes thinner rather than shorter! Your Frosted Flakes box still looks the same size on the shelf — it's only when you reach to pick it up that you can tell it's skinnier and contains less cereal. In fact, consumers have been complaining that these thinner packages can often barely stand up on the shelves without falling over.

Even the candy aisle gets hit with shrinkflation. For years, consumers watched in horror as the increase in the cost of cocoa beans caused prices to rise on delectable chocolate favorites like Three Musketeers and KitKat. Gone are the days of 25 cent candy bars, but once the retail price reached a dollar or more per bar, shrinkflation began to rear its ugly head.

Like most large business channels, the candy manufacturing industry has created new reasons to downsize. For example, Mars Inc., the company that makes Snickers bars, stated in 2012 that they were discontinuing the King Size bar in order to help its customers enjoy "responsible snacking." Downsizing from its original 280 calories means that the new bar size is 11% smaller than the original.

Shrinkflation in the chocolate business soon moved on to the piece size and unit count of the seasonal goodies that we hand out to our trick-or-treaters on Halloween. What was originally a "fun size" Three Musketeers bar suddenly became "bite size," and then simply "mini," all the while becoming proportionately smaller. To add even more profitability for the candy companies, the number of units per package was reduced as well, doubling down on the product loss for consumers.

Beer is hugely popular all around the world – and if you're a beer lover you've probably experienced shrinkflation in a different manner than with traditional groceries. In your neighborhood bar or restaurant, more than 50% of beer consumed on site is not served in bottles or cans — it's served on draft in a glass. And that's where things can get a little tricky.

For years, draft beers in the bar were poured into traditional pint glasses – 16 ounces of sudsy joy served up ice cold and frothy. The glasses were all the same size, and everybody knew what they were getting. However, several years ago, the beverage industry saw a shift to glasses that looked like pint glasses, but in fact contained only 14 ounces, or 12.5% less brew. Even more covertly, manufacturers began turning out beer mugs with false bottoms, allowing for the illusion of a tall frosty stein, all the while hiding the fact that they contain less liquid. Next time you're at a Chili's, order a draft beer and check it out by poking your finger under the bottom of the mug.

Sports stadiums, arenas, and theaters also feature draft beer in large volumes. But since there is no definition of the actual product amount in terms such as "Small" or "Large," these venues can take advantage of unsuspecting consumers with inaccurate labels and descriptions, often providing no difference in the pour other than price.

While the custom of buying and brewing loose-leaf tea is still popular, most regular and flavored tea is packaged in boxes that hold tea bags, which is one of our favorite finds at Aldi. Traditionally, these boxes have contained a convenient, round number of tea bags with the same amount of tea in them. But shrinkflation has changed that.

Industry titan Twinings recently reduced the number of bags in its number one selling package size from 100 to 80, or a full 20% drop-off after years of consistency. Despite claims by the company that they also reduced the wholesale price of the boxes, studies quickly showed that this was not the case. And while the actual amount of tea in the tea bags has not changed in over 70 years, the reduction of individual bags in each box can save the manufacturer millions of dollars every year.

Even canned or bottled iced tea isn't safe from the shrinkflation scourge. In many locations, Lipton Iced Tea, a leading iced tea brand owned by PepsiCo, is seeing 20-ounce packaging now dropping to 16 or even 14.5 ounces. That sure takes away from the icy cold refreshment.

Folks in the United States eat 3 billion pizzas every year. We just can't seem to get enough of that crispy, cheesy, gooey goodness. But even this much-loved go-to treat is suffering greatly from the shrinkflation craze.

For example, shoppers are noticing that perennial favorite DiGiorno pizza, always near the top of the best frozen pizza brands that you can find at a grocery store, seems to be shrinking in size while rising in price. Frozen pizza varieties across the board have leaned into the sneaky process of using the same cardboard box dimensions as usual to conceal the reduction in size of the pie inside. They may look the same in the frozen food section, but the difference is noticeable with a little diligent observation.

Industry leader Pizza Hut has taken a different approach to shrinkflation. In 2014, they converted to a "skinny slice" philosophy with the spin that using less dough and cheese is actually healthier, noting that, "It tastes great, and it cuts back on calories." So even though a pizza with less cheese and dough saves Pizza Hut money, the price of each pie stays the same for the customer. Classic shrinkflation.

In 2024, the savory snack food market is expected to generate more than $50 billion in sales revenue in the United States alone. And although snack foods can be some of the unhealthiest food we put into our bodies, our love of chips and crackers offers the opportunity for big companies such as PepsiCo, owner of Frito Lay, to increase their profitability through shrinkflation. Even President Joe Biden has called out the snack industry for "skimpy bags of potato chips."

Recently, PepsiCo has vowed to address this problem, but if you look a little closer, it may not be the permanent solution they want you to think it is. While Frito Lay is adding up to 20% of additional product to many of its chip brands, this trend is far from permanent — in fact, it doesn't even extend to all of their chips and salty snack products. Additionally, many of these bags are labeled "bonus bags," further cementing the likelihood of this being only a temporary fix to the ongoing shrinkflation problem.

It's not just traditional potato chips and snacks that are changing either. According to reports, Pringles Potato Crisps have shrunk in both can volume and actual chip size. That may be better for our overall health, but it certainly isn't good for our pocketbooks.

Nothing in the cookie sector is more popular, tasty, and loved than the classic Oreo. Over the years, the product line has grown, adding new flavors, stuffings, and even customized names and logos. But one question remains: Are they the same size with the same stuffing as they always have been?

It's no surprise that, in that same timespan, the retail price of this classic cookie has increased. The cost of cocoa has skyrocketed in recent years. But Mondelez International, the company that makes Oreos, swears that their cookies and stuffing are the same size as they always have been. Not surprisingly, consumer advocate investigations are proving otherwise. Last year, shrinkflation website Mouse Print documented that the packaging of regular Oreos dropped a full ounce last year and contained four less cookies in it, stating that, "People have been complaining about the dollop of creme inside regular Oreos seems to have gotten much smaller." Also, a high-school math class determined there was a lot less stuffing than Oreos promotes, with an experiment from Business Insider saying, "Our thorough investigation reveals that double-stuffed Oreos only contain on average 1.91 times more stuff than the original." If we can't trust Oreo to stuff the original cookies as full as they used to, we definitely can't trust them to double stuff them.

We love our fur babies. According to a recent National Pet Owners Survey by the American Pet Products association, about 66% of homes in the United States have at least one pet — a higher percentage than ever before. Sounds like the perfect opportunity for a unique brand of shrinkflation.

Dry dog foods are the main culprits in pet food shrinkflation. Traditionally, bags of dry food came in very typical, rounded-off sizes, such as 10 pounds, 30 pounds, and 50 pounds. Over the past few years, these have been replaced with 8, 25, and 45 pound bags — and sometimes even less.

A number of high-end brands such as Royal Canin have also downsized their canned food packaging in recent years. So be diligent when you are shopping — the food in that large-sized dog food bag is likely not going as far as it used to with your pup.

One of the most popular cat foods in the industry, Whiskas, has reduced the package size of both their wet and dry foods. Owned by Mars, both types of cat food have lost about 15% of their volume while retaining the same packaging. 

Despite the influx of shrinkflation in our economy, there's some good news on the horizon. Many large companies are actively working to address (and even reduce) shrinkflation in some or all of their products. Domino's Pizza recently combated shrinkflation with a Moreflation promotion, allowing customers to order two medium pizzas and then bump one up to a large for no additional cost. PepsiCo is adding extra product to its bags of Tostitos and Ruffles potato chips while leaving the price the same.

You even have the government on your side. The Shrinkflation Prevention Act of 2024 was introduced into Congress in early 2024 and addresses many of the methods that large companies use to mislead consumers.

You can work to combat shrinkflation by shopping a little smarter. Check packaging closely — sometimes the older, fuller packages have not sold out and can still be found on the grocery store shelf. Watch for deals and sales, taking note of the number of portions included in each package that you examine. You can also buy in bulk, as the unit price often drops drastically when you purchase a larger size. So, dust off that little-used calculator function on your phone, do a bit of homework, and get the value you deserve for your money.