To Fight ‘Shrinkflation’ France Will Force Retailers to Warn Shoppers: Merchants will be required to put signs in front of all products that have been reduced in size without a corresponding price cut

I wish we had a small percent of what France does for its consumer rights in the United States.

That's why the French protest all the time. They fight for their rights.
That's because we don't set shit on fire every time the government looks at us wrong.
- Perhaps it’s time to change that
- You're right. We have idiots setting themselves on fire in front of courthouses instead.
THAT'S AMERICA BABY LOVE GETTING STEPPED ON AND ASK FOR MORE OR QUIETLY GET STEPPED ON AND GET MORE ANYWAY HOOOOOAH 🦅🦅🦅🦅🎆🎆🎆🎆
_{(Help us)}

This has been the law in Brazil for more than 10 years now. We have lots of problems here, but at least our consumer protection laws are top notch. And, believe or not, they're enforced successfully.

Thanks for sharing, it's great tk hear and I didn't know!

We all need to apologize to France for literally every mean thing we ever said about them.

We used to have standardized package sizes in the EU for things like butter, chocolate, etc. So stupid to give that up

I guarantee it's because of neoliberals and conservatives trying to emulate The US.

That is what a respectable government looks like

It feels a bit "least we could do" ish?
They're not setting standard size scales for basic products or establishing price floors based on wholesale/production costs, much less intervening to increase supply or reduce overhead costs.
This is a bit like the surgeon generals warning on a pack of cigarettes. Nice, I guess. But hardly a game changer.
- Meanwhile in America
  Haha big business go brrrrrr

Really we just need to standardize sizes for consumer goods. For example: drinks can come in 250, 500, 750, 1000, and 2000 mL sizes. Sold soap must be sold in units of 100, 500, or 1000 grams. And so on...

But then you get shrinkflation in the product itself. Less emulsifiers in the soap, drinks with corn syrup replacing sugar, and powders like cinnamon cut with lead powder.
Not saying it couldn't be done, just that businesses are really incentivised to find the loopholes and exploit them.
- In Australia we call this "skimpflation" because they aren't shrinking the final product, they're skimping on ingredients to lower production costs.
  It's the bane of my existence because brands I know and love will change their ingredients without warning and without changing anything on the packaging (sometimes not even changing the ingredients list! If the ingredients list has always just said "starch" they don't have to change anything going from arrowroot starch to cheaper potato starch)
  I have allergies and I've bought two boxes of the same product at the same time, and had an allergic reaction to one, but not the other.
  I used to always blame it on my housemates not washing the cooking utensils properly, but I now use separate cooking equipment and I clean down the kitchen before I start and cook at odd times so I'm the only one using the kitchen.
  I've started emailing companies after my allergic reactions to determine if they have changed an ingredient, and 90% of the time they confirm they have changed the ingredients. Usually they put some PR spin on it about the new ingredient being more allergy friendly or sustainable (they don't clarify "environmentally" so I assume they mean "financially sustainable for the profits of our company")
- Less emulsifiers in the soap, drinks with corn syrup replacing sugar, and powders like cinnamon cut with lead powder.
  Standard formulas for a given product. Anything that isn't 40% sugar drink is "immitation soda drink". Anything that's under-emulsified can't be called real soap.
  These are solvable problems at a regulatory level. But at some point, it may be more cost efficient to simply nationalize the under-performing industry. Perhaps Coca-Cola just can't cut it making soda drinks anymore, and the firm needs to be broken up and devolved to the various states as State Soda Bottling Company

This seems like a great idea and i wouldn't mind it getting expanded to become an EU wide norm.

That said it only adresses part of the problem. Another way consumers get tricked are recipe changes to substitute expensive ingredients for cheaper ones. And this one also subverts the mandatory kg/€ (or litre/€) price notices, which in a way already help with identifying shrinkflation. Although prominent warnings would help a lot fighting the psychological tricks involved in shrinkflation.

Personally i would also like laws to go even further and make it mandatory for companies to maintain public databases with product sizing and ingredients. Although i assume it wouldn't be easy to fight against companies trying to subvert such system and claiming that near identical products are something new rather than just a new worse version of something existing.

On that note i also miss the more standardized portion sizes we had here in Germany for a lot of products. Actually something that sadly had to be abolished due to eu regulations, which at the same time at least seemed to have given us the already mentioned kg/€ price labels.

I had to jog my memory with this article (in german) from 2009 when the change apparently happened. An example it gives is that e.g. sugar (up to a size of 1kg) could only be sold in portions of 100, 250, 500, 750 und 1000g. So no trickery with random inbetween sizes. Obviously not a huge problem with something like sugar, but it similarly also applied to something like chocolate bars. Which nowadays come in the most random, constantly changing weights.

Maybe a bit heavy handed, but i wouldn't mind fighting shrinkflation in some areas by simply forcing standardized sizes.

I don’t think it’s heavy handed. Shrinkflation fucks in recipes. One recipe calls for condensed milk. Due to shrinkflation I have to buy two cans and throw half of one away.

At this point I just stopped buying chips. Feels like such a waste to fill the bag less than half way...

good for you. Not really a necessity anyhow, have some nuts, it's better for you.

good ol' name and shame!

Look up the lyrics to "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" for instructions on how to deal with this kind of theft.

I think the unit price should be more prominent than the price per item.

I don't think this is the right way to go. Mandatory "compare prices" to be displayed with the same, or better, viability as the price is much better. That way the consumer immediately sees that the price went up since last week. What it also brings is the opportunity to compare which one of two sizes of the same product is a better deal.

In the US grocery stores are required to list the cost per weight. It mostly works, unless one of the manufacturers decides to show the price in grams or kilograms, as opposed to oz or pounds.