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.
Here’s my attempt at copying the article for readers:
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.
For months, the shelves of Carrefour, France’s biggest supermarket chain, have been dotted with bright orange signs placed in front of Pepsi bottles, Lays potato chips and a variety of other foods whose packages are suspiciously smaller than they used to be.
“Shrinkflation,” the signs say. “This product has seen its volume decrease and the price charged by our supplier increase.”
On Friday, the French government took steps to require every food retailer in the country to follow suit. By July 1, stores will have to plaster warnings in front of all products that have been reduced in size without a corresponding price cut, in a bid to combat the consumer scourge known as shrinkflation.
“The practice of shrinkflation is a scam,” Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, said in a statement. “We are putting an end to it.”
The government is also encouraging shoppers to act as informers, urging those “who have doubts about the price per unit of measurement displayed on the shelves” to flag it to the authorities via France’s consumer reporting app.
The fight against the practice of downsizing products without also downsizing their prices has picked up in the United States, where President Biden has shamed food companies for raising prices even as inflation cooled.
Shrinkflation has become a point of outrage for shoppers in France, and a political issue for President Emmanuel Macron as consumers continue to grapple with a cost-of-living crisis. Although inflation has recently come down in Europe from the record highs of a year ago, the prices of many food products remain elevated.
Inflation in the eurozone fell to a new two-year low in March, the result of an aggressive campaign of interest rate increases by the European Central Bank. European governments had also worked to ease prices for energy and food, through subsidies for electric bills and by negotiating with food manufacturers to force prices down.
In France, inflation has fallen now more than a third from a year earlier, but higher food prices have been persistent. A typical basket of food basics that includes items such as pasta and yogurt is 3 to 5 percent higher than it was a year ago, after a 16 percent surge for 2023.
Mr. Macron had promised to wrestle food costs down further this year. The government moved up annual price negotiations between suppliers and retailers in February, and put pressure on companies to limit increases.
The shrinkflation campaign is the latest weapon. Stores will have to display signs for two months after downsized products have been put on their shelves, according to the government decree issued Friday. The signs will appear near a variety of goods made by food companies, as well as for the supermarket’s private-label brands, from snacks and soda to bags of rice and laundry detergent. Prepackaged foods, like shrink-wrapped deli cold cuts or foods sold in bulk, will be exempt.
Many global consumer goods companies have raised prices by double-digit percentages in the past year, attributing the increases to higher costs of ingredients and labor. Even so, many of those companies have reported expanding profits as they sell fewer items at higher prices.
The issue came to a head in France last year when Carrefour announced that it would no longer sell PepsiCo products because the prices were “unacceptably” high for consumers, escalating a showdown by French retailers to name and shame brands that were not reducing prices as inflation eases.
As part of its campaign, Carrefour also put up shrinkflation posters next to products like Lipton tea warning shoppers that they were paying a higher price for a product whose volume had shrunk.
France has submitted a proposal to the European Union that would force food retailers throughout Europe to carry out a shrinkflation labeling campaign.
I would think that would be covered by the corresponding price cut part. If they are smart they put in a clause that says the price cut has to be proportional or bigger otherwise it is considered shrinkflation.
Bringing awareness to issues (even through memes) is a good way to get people who are capable of fighting in on the fight.
What also tends to happen though is that when an issue gets popular, some people jump on the bandwagon for the dopamine hit that comes from the attention they get when they make content about the issue. Hell, even when they don’t make it. I’ve seen stickied comments on clips of popular music videos (just one ridiculous example) posted by fans where they’re saying shit like, “Oh my god guys! Thank you so much for all the likes and comments! I didn’t expect this to be so big!” Ummm, it’s a Beatles clip my guy. You didn’t do anything but reupload a bit of it in short form. You out here acting like you just a member of the band caught off guard by how many people like you.
I always have to be a dick and ask, “Oh, you made this?”
1/3 will do nothing but sit and watch while the other 1/3 kills the remaining 1/3 and that do-nothing-1/3 will call you a tankie and fight you if you try to do anything.
The real reason the 2A exists and continues as-is: it lets those elites in control rile up the stupid masses (that they keep that way) to literally murder the people trying to fix how fucked up shit has become
that may have been the intention but it’s now weaker and more ineffectual than using an umbrella instead of a parachute; times have changed and provisions from literally hundreds of years ago do nothing
I agree, but it’s also worth noting the influence of police forces, riot police, swat teams, and the national guard.
The US basically has an occupying army to quell unrest in every county across the country, so it’s harder to properly protest without state retaliation. Not to say we shouldn’t do it, but I can understand people’s reticence.
Oh so I’m guessing it did come out he was doing it for Trump? Because the one who did it in protest of the our support of Israel was looked at as a kind of a hero here.
The reporting I’ve seen was that he had been hanging around the courthouse for a few days and was obviously mentally unwell but he essentially thinks Biden and Trump are working together to establish a fascist state and it all heavily involves Peter Thiel. I didn’t read it but someone made a word cloud of his pamphlet and it was all over the place and even involved conspiracy theories of yore that have been supplanted by QAnon and vaccine stuff.
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