“Shrinkflation” Is as Old as the Hills – By Keith Plocek (Slate) / Aug 26, 2022
And people used to think it was the right thing to do.
Skinny Gatorade bottles. Puffed-up bags of chips. Tiny Filets-O-Fish. This has been the summer of “shrinkflation,” with the media full of stories of consumers who are pissed off about companies selling smaller portions, while keeping prices the same. The practice just seems downright sneaky, and the complaints have gotten so loud that both Trevor Noah and John Oliver have devoted time to riffing on the resulting media coverage.
Many of these stories frame shrinkflation as a recent phenomenon, a novel form of trickery that helps corporations keep profits high without consumers catching on, despite rising inflation and lingering supply-chain issues. But anyone who buys processed snacks knows packages have been full of air for years, and the practice of shrinking sizes instead of raising prices goes back centuries. Shrinkflation is not new, and for a long while it was actually considered the more ethical way of doing business.
Consider a loaf of bread, a very basic unit when it comes to prepared food. Whenever grain was in short supply in feudal Europe, bakers had two choices: They could either raise prices or sell smaller loaves. They chose the latter. To do otherwise would violate the widely-held principle of a “just price”—formulated by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century—and invite a bread riot.
Bakers who raised prices risked a breakdown in the social order, especially in the rowdy cities of the late 18th century. “The peasant threatened with a lack of bread sought to assuage the Almighty, but urban plebes faced with excessive prices for bread would riot against the magistrates or their overlord, loot the grain stories, and kill bakers,” wrote historian Witold Kula in Measures and Men.
CONTINUE > https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/what-is-shrinkflation-a-history.html
