I made several unpleasant discoveries recently.
The local store brand of potato chips appears to be changing their packaging to adjust for inflation by reducing the contents from 8 ounces to 7.75.
The last two 8-oz. bags on the shelf had different ingredients as well as slightly greater mass.
Dairy was hiding in the ingredients for yet another chip flavor that had no business containing dairy in the first place. "Kettle cooked" or not, why???
I try to check the ingredient list on everything I buy. Food allergies requires hyper-vigilance. This makes shopping exhausting. And sometimes things get overlooked, like in the case of those potato chips. I read one bag, but not the other, and paid the consequence of being sick shortly thereafter, and largely bedridden the following day. It's not fun at all.
Why were the bags changing? Unless you've been living under a rock, or you're Paul Krugman, you know the economy is a mess right now. All the economic indicators are warning of a crisis due to years of artificially low interest rates distorting time preference calculations, followed by the chaos of COVID policies, and then the ongoing effects of "economic stimulus" inflation. Now the chicken hawks want war with Russia, China, and Iran to boot.
I would argue all of this global-scale big-picture stuff played a role in why I had a nasty tummyache. Economic turmoil means companies can't always maintain supply lines and must change formulations for their products. Rising costs must be passed along to the consumer through either higher prices or smaller quantities or changes in quality.
Of course the politicians who were eager to claim credit for the pasts false prosperity of a bubble economy are also eager to blame a mysterious surge in corporate greed, or simply insist the consumers are ignorant of how good things are. I believe we are in for hard times as the consequences of kicking the cans across the bridges we burned before we crossed them and other mixed metaphors start to look like they make sense.
And all of this because I just wanted a goddamn snack last week. You're welcome?
