by TheNiteOw1
We all know “shrinkflation” exists, but I just experienced it big time last night/today. Made spaghetti for the family last night, I cook it like I always do, after it’s all done cooking, I pour the water out of the pot, and I look what I have in the pot. The amount of spaghetti seemed rather small, but I was like whatever and go about dishing it up to everyone.
Everyone starts getting their portion, and I go last because I’m the cook. I look what’s left in the pot, and there is only a little bit left. I’m like wow, so I get my portion, and then I started thinking about when I used to make spaghetti sometimes people would get 2nds and we would usually always have left overs. Also, not to mention we had plenty of sauce left. I’m like that’s cool I’ll store the left over sauce in the refrigerator and I’ll make spaghetti tomorrow for lunch.
Flash forward to today, I’m looking through the pantry for another package of spaghetti and come across an older one we had way back in the pantry from 2014! I’m like we need to use this up, so I end up cooking it. Right off the batch as I am taking the spaghetti out of the box, I notice how much more spaghetti there was. I end up cooking it, draining the water, and I was astounded how much was there. So I’m like okay, this is crazy, they couldn’t have shrunk the package that match, so I start searching in the trash for the box from last night.
I find the box and compared it to the box I had from 2014. I was blown away, the Spaghetti I cooked last night (2022) was a 12 oz package, the older box I cooked with today (2014) was 16 oz! Same brand, same type, no difference except for the year it was manufactured! The difference of 4 oz doesn’t sound like a lot, but when it comes to a product like pasta that increases in size when you cook, it’s obviously a huge difference! Makes me wonder how many other things we have just gotten used to over the years that they are doing this to.