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Edited on Thu May-15-08 02:36 PM by Gentle Giant
I thought I would take a minute to :rant: about some serious changes I'm witnessing regarding common food items, which many of you have probably noticed. I'd also like to hear of any other examples of these types of things if any of you out there have them. This is something that needs to be talked about because it's the type of stuff that just sort of "sneaks by" an inflation index which is already ridiculously biased and false.
The first thing I've recently noticed is that Dreyer's ice cream, which used to come in 2 quart containers, has been shrunk down for the second time in about a year. The first time, they left out about a cup to make a container 1.75 quarts. Now just this past week my wife went to buy us some as a treat and it was 1.5 quarts. Of course, the price hasn't dropped. And if I do say so myself, the stuff actually tasted pretty flaky to me. Since this is the sort of thing we only buy once every couple of months anyway, I suppose now I'll just write it off as not worth the money. It's full of corn syrup anyway.
Next stop, Doritos. I can remember back in my high school days of all-weekend Dungeons and Dragons sleepovers, Doritos and bean dip being one of our staples. Back then, 7-11 had the 16 ounce bags of the various flavors for about $1.79, and occasionally on sale for barely a buck (this was in the mid 80s). The chips were thick and crunchy, tasted wonderful, and wouldn't break as you drug them through a can of thick bean dip. Over the years, that 16 ounce bag of chips has decreased in size by small steps to where it is now only either 12.25 or 12.5 ounces and is price stamped $3.79 at the factory. I tried some of the Cooler Ranch chips a couple days ago and could not believe the difference in taste and texture. The chips now have a thin, flaky, frail body to them and after one chew they just melt into your mouth as though they were made out of some kind of flour rather than stone-ground corn like before. They also tasted much less "ranchy" than I remember, though that's harder to really quantify. Once again, this is a junk food item which I really can't justify being in the same zip code as with my health issues, but to me it sucks that one of my lifelong favorite comfort foods has taken a nosedive to the point where I no longer have any interest in it at all.
Finally, today we're expecting the exterminator over any time now to help get our bug problem under control, so the kitchen has been pretty much emptied out and I'm not about to mess it up trying to cook anything until he's come and gone. I needed some kind of snack to stop the hunger pangs I'm feeling, and sometimes when I get desperate I'll break open a bag of the 10-for-a-buck ramen noodles and just munch on them dry (and I know I'm not the only one who does this so don't even start with me!). Anywho, I notice that the noodle package is the same size it has always been, but it seems conspicuously... empty compared to how they used to be. Inside the package was this little square-shaped clump of dry ramen noodles, whereas not too long ago they came in a longer, more rectangular portion. The weight on the package said 3 ounces. I might be wrong here, but I could swear that they used to be 4 ounces. At least they otherwise tasted as predictably cardboard-ish as they normally do. :eyes:
At Trader Joe's, where we do a lot of our shopping, the staples we depend on like organic, unsweetened soy milk and organic whole wheat pasta have seen price increases of around 50% in the past year. The cereals, which used to be almost universally under $2 per box, are now around $3 and in many cases higher. Sprouted grain bread is almost double in price compared to when I first started going there a few years ago.
I guess it's time to look into a thrift store bread machine, and to start worshipping at the altar of split pea and potato soup. On the bright side, it's a hell of a lot healthier and cheaper!
So, what other examples do my fellow DU'ers have of hidden inflation and declining food quality?
edited for text error
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