Soaring price of food shopping masked by top-selling brands from Doritos, WKD to Kellogg’s SHRINKING the size of their products
Top brands are giving less to customers by cutting size of their products - despite ramping up prices
THE soaring price of food shopping is being masked by top-selling brands skimping on sizes, a report reveals today.
The rise in the cost of a weekly shop is SEVEN TIMES higher than the official figure due to “shrink-flation” — where manufacturers cut a product’s quantity but not its price.
Baroness Susan Kramer, whose Lib Dem Treasury team conducted the research, said: “If you used to get 20 biscuits in a packet and now you only get 16 for the same money, that is inflation by another name.
“Shoppers are being short-changed and ministers should come clean about the real rate of inflation.”
Consumers are told that the cost of their weekly shop is going up by only 2.3 per cent a year.
But the real rate of inflation is 15.8 per cent — or an extra £9.16 on a typical £58 weekly shopping bill — when smaller sizes are included alongside rising prices.
Peperami snacks have been trimmed from 25g to 22.5g while the price has remained at 79p a stick.
Sharing bags of Doritos have been reduced from 200g to 180g but are still on sale for the same average price of £1.99.
Booze has also been hit.
Morrisons sold 330ml bottles of WKD Original Vodka Blue for £1 last year. Earlier this year, the bottles shrunk to 275ml but the price stayed the same.
A large box of Coco Pops cereal has been reduced in size from 800g to 720g, while the smaller 550g box now weighs 510g.
Manufacturer Kellogg’s said it had reduced the size by cutting down on the amount of sugar in each pack.
Packs of British bangers from Sainsbury’s, turkey fillets from Asda and frozen chips from Iceland have all shrunk in size — but not in price.
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The practice has also hit chocolate treats such as KitKat, Maltesers and Toblerone, which now has wider gaps between its triangular peaks.
Other items which have got smaller include Birds Eye Fish Fingers, Mr Kipling Angel Slices, Asda Turkey Mini Fillets and Tropicana juice drinks.
Lady Kramer added: “The Pound has plummeted so import costs have shot up. This sharp rise also comes as real incomes fall.”
Consumer group Which? blasted the “sneaky way for manufacturers and supermarkets to increase prices”.
The Food and Drink Federation, which represents manufacturers, says many producers face cost increases of 20 per cent because of the Pound’s drop in value since the outcome of last year’s EU referendum.
But it insists shoppers are far too “savvy” to be fooled by the underhand way of passing on costs.