There’s a new buzzword a blowin’ in the wind amongst the politicians’ run-of-the-mill pandering and false promises that are typical in an election year here in the good old US of A.
It’s apparently such a threat that Elizabeth Warren has even introduced a bill to crack down on it.
The dreaded word is Shrink-flation.
In case you somehow haven't heard about it, Shrinkflation is the phenomena whereby the handful of corporations that own a majority of the companies that make our food are gradually shrinking the amount of food in packages and containers and charging us the same or, in some cases, even more for them.
I get that this is a real problem for American families in these tough economic times but shrinkflation doesn’t seem to register anywhere near the top of the list of our country’s more pressing problems. I find it rather interesting that our politicians have chosen this particular issue to wage war against. The concept of shrinkflation comes across as only scratching the surface, or maybe even a smokescreen for a more the larger issue.
I think the real threat here is actually Greedflation.
Sorry, I know this word is pretty lame but I was hard pressed to come up with a better one. For decades corporations of all kinds have increased their profit margins by lowering the quality of the materials and ingredients they sell us. This applies to pretty much everything you can think of.
Now that they’ve cheapened the ingredients as much as they possibly can, the only trick left up their sleeves to keep profits growing is to come up with sneaky ways to give us less of the same low quality crap than they did before. In the case of junk food they might actually be doing us a favor by giving us less.
I was perusing YouTube the yesterday and I came across this interesting video about Chef Boyardee (a bit of trivia—the chef’s surname was actually Boiardi before it was changed to the phonetic spelling to be more marketable).
Anyone growing up in America in the last seventy years probably remembers Chef Boyardee’s line of products. The quality of their food was already declining significantly in the 1970’s. I mean it was palatable but not the greatest tasting or healthiest thing you could have on your table. The meat was especially suspect. Without fail, seconds after opening the cans you were enveloped with a fragrance that was a cross between the metallic scent of the can and dirty feet (likely from the low-budget parmesan cheese).
What I didn’t realize is that this company, now owned by mega food corp ConAgra, used to sell extremely high quality food made from healthy ingredients. I remember all too well what Chef Boyardee spaghetti tasted like in my childhood and I wanted to compare this to what the original recipe tasted like.
I’ll be buying all of the ingredients and making this original Chef Boiardi spaghetti dinner recipe next week. Who knows, I might even buy a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti to conduct my own side-by-side taste comparison.
Now, even my taste buds will get to experience how far we've fallen because of greedflation. I can almost guarantee the original recipe doesn't have a bouquet of metal and feet.
If you decide to try this recipe for yourself please let me know what you think!
Buona giornata. Thank you for reading!
~Eric Vance Walton~
(Gifs sourced from Giphy.com)
