Revisiting things of our childhoods often produces a strange sensation. Particularly how much smaller everything looked than what was remembered.
The backyard where imaginary ponies were kept and countless football games were played seemed like a hundred yards long when it was maybe a hundred feet. The precipitous hill down which I daringly rode my skateboard in my grandparents’ neighborhood at age 10 revealed to not be much of an incline at 30. And then there’s the granola bar.
I recall those rectangular moldings of whole grain oats and chocolate chips being so much wider and longer in my childhood. Now, they easily fit in the palms of our hands. Perhaps it’s because we are now all bigger than when we were kids—the scales of perspective tipped by maturation and growth. Except… those granola bars look small in my kids’ hands, too.
Something’s also amiss with bags of chips. They look all puffy and full on the grocery store shelf. But tearing the top reveals most of the contents as air. The manufacturers argue they need to create space for preserving the product’s integrity while in transit, though we know better: it’s about preserving their profits.
The baked variety is the worst offender. Marketed as a healthier chip, because it’s, you know, baked, the truth is there’s way fewer of them in the bag, meaning you have no choice but to consume less and be healthier. Unless of course you buy two servings to accommodate for the dwindling chip population, which can be completed in roughly 12 bites for both bags.
Poking around online at this phenomenon revealed words like “Product Downsizing” and “Shrinkflation.” And lots of percentage and ratio references of prices increasing while size offerings decrease. It’s rampant across bags of coffee, tooth paste, cereal, peanut butter, sodas, tuna cans and toilet paper—yes, toilet paper. We are a deeply divided nation, but we can all be unified on this precious commodity not consisting of fewer squares. It was bad enough when it was in shortly supply during COVID-19's first wave.
Ironically, grown foods of the non-organic variety come in super sizes, where grapes look like apples, apples look like cantaloupes, cantaloupes look like watermelons, and watermelons look like inflatable pool toys. But good, old-fashioned processed foods without the growth hormones? They look like organic foods.
Parents are used to this trend in the way of maturing Christmas presents—the boxed things our kids want get smaller than the toys and Lego sets desired in Yuletides past, while the costs of these wrapped technological wonders escalate exponentially. But it’s a dirty trick when it comes to everyday consumable goods.
There’s got to be some point where companies realize they can’t short us anymore. Will a serving size of cereal eventually only be a spoonful? When does travel size become standard? Where does the infinite smallness quotient of food offerings stop shrinking?
As the buying power of a dollar lessens with inflation, and product offerings decrease, pretty soon, we’ll be spending six bucks at the grocery store for just enough beans to make a single cup of coffee. Franchised coffee shops already know this game, using tricky Italian-sounding names for portion sizes.
I guess that means “grande” and “long” teenier-sized granola bars will be appearing on the snack aisle soon.
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