The Incredible Shrinking Box—A Sign of the Times

I hope this rant will be the short blog post that everyone in my family keeps telling me is de rigueur. As you might be able to tell from my profile and previous posts, I am pretty old for a blogger. I have been catering, cooking, and developing recipes for a long time.

Many years ago, the problem began with the standard one-pound (16 oz.) can. One day, we suddenly noticed that it was only 15 ounces and the price had gone up. Then, items that were packaged in the freezer case came in the same size box, but the weight of the contents inside kept getting smaller for the same money. This situation can be very problematic when you are using old recipes that call for standard quantities. Over the years, we have had to modify our recipes in many cases, to accommodate new standard sizes that never seem to stay standard.

We were so delighted when a new Trader Joe’s opened in our neighborhood because we no longer had to travel long distances to obtain these large, comparatively inexpensive boxes of Barbara’s Shredded Oat Cereal which we love. We were down to our last box, so Saul ran over to get some more. Only because I lined the new ones up with the old did I realize that there were subtle changes. See how many you can find. Will things ever get larger again? …in my lifetime?