[HN Gopher] Shitflation, shrinkflation, inflation database
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Shitflation, shrinkflation, inflation database
Author : jonatron
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-12-22 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jonatron.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonatron.github.io)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I cook from basic ingredients almost exclusively. This avoids
| most of the issues in this article, but then again prices for
| these have doubled or more over the last two years. At least
| there it is more in your face.
| gruez wrote:
| >but then again prices for these have doubled or more over the
| last two years.
|
| Where are you buying your food? At least according to BLS data
| raw ingredient inflation is nowhere near that high. If you
| compare the price indices between today and late 2019, the max
| price you see is 59% (for the entire period, not annualized).
| Most are in the 20-30% range. I know this is BLS data for the
| whole country and localized inflation might be higher in
| specific places and/or outside the US, but 4x higher seems like
| hyperbole.
|
| Here's a comparison based on an arbitrary selection of "basic
| ingredients": category Nov. 2023 Dec. 2019 %
| rise Flour and prepared flour mixes 325.853 225.638
| 44.4% Rice, pasta, cornmeal 291.728 234.282 24.5%
| Beef and veal 415.788 313.818 32.5% Pork chops(4)
| 242.457 191.834 26.4% Other pork including roasts,
| steaks, and ribs(5) 160.961 129.193 24.6% Chicken(4)(5)
| 194.86 152.095 28.1% Other uncooked poultry including
| turkey(5) 209.362 147.475 42.0% Fresh fish and
| seafood(4)(5) 220.513 186.119 18.5% Eggs(4) 261.105
| 213.421 22.3% Milk(5) 176.76 144.845 22.0%
| Cheese and related products(4) 264.392 234.486 12.8%
| Fresh fruits 417.433 353.047 18.2% Fresh vegetables
| 376.284 334.875 12.4% Frozen fruits and vegetables(5)
| 186.642 142.654 30.8% Roasted coffee(6) 250.296 196.173
| 27.6% Sugar and sugar substitutes 261.475 186.257 40.4%
| Butter and margarine(5) 284.894 199.761 42.6%
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201022124428if_/https://www.bl...
| anonymouswacker wrote:
| Government lies, aka statistics, conveniently ignore the cost
| of high quality items when doing averages. If you are buying
| eggs as a health conscious person, you know not to buy
| $1/dozen eggs any more because industry producers have made
| them low cost by reducing quality, feeding chickens soy and
| the cheapest excuse for food. The pastured ones are 5-10x the
| cost and the quality is night and day. US government
| conveniently views these things as staples, but they are not.
| brvsft wrote:
| https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-
| hedo...
|
| I think this sums it up well. People mostly don't know or
| care about how hedonic regression is used in CPI (myself
| included, on knowing). I don't think the process is easy to
| understand nor transparent (although I may be wrong here).
|
| But BLS denies this assessment (and it's not 100% related
| to the article posted, but closely related to your comment
| I think):
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-
| abo...
|
| > When the cost of food rises, does the CPI assume that
| consumers switch to less desired foods, such as
| substituting hamburger for steak?
|
| > No. ...
|
| > Is the use of "hedonic quality adjustment" in the CPI
| simply a way of lowering the inflation rate?
|
| > No. ...
|
| Obviously, they provide their own explanations, but I'm not
| going to paste the whole thing. This is definitely
| something I'd like to understand better though. Especially
| every time I complain about how Chewy Chips Ahoy or some
| other product I enjoyed in my childhood is absolute garbage
| now, and I don't buy the explanation that I simply had bad
| taste as a kid.
|
| They also host this Quality Adjustment page to say which
| types of products do or don't have such adjustments:
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm. So
| maybe this is transparency. I think it would take me 2+
| hours on a weekend to really research this to understand it
| myself.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The BLS also produces an inflation research series called
| R-CPI-U-RS that does not make substitutions, and it's
| really not very different from the formal CPI series. [1]
|
| Note that all of the data and methodology that goes into
| this is public and if there were any real, actually
| problematic substitutions, you'd know about it. The
| substitutions are good, actually, as they reflect changes
| in tastes. For instance, lobster and caviar used to be
| food for poor people. Should they be part of the CPI
| despite the fact they're rich people food now? Definitely
| not, that would massively overstate inflation.
|
| > Especially every time I complain about how Chewy Chips
| Ahoy or some other product I enjoyed in my childhood is
| absolute garbage now, and I don't buy the explanation
| that I simply had bad taste as a kid.
|
| Honestly, I buy that completely. We've known our tastes
| change as we get older. I used to hate tomatoes, now I
| love them. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/research-series/r-cpi-u-rs-
| home.htm
|
| [2] https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-
| news/ar...
| arcticbull wrote:
| There has been significant increase in ingredient prices _at
| grocery stores_ due to the consolidation of basically every
| chain under Kroger and Cerberus Capital Management. They 've
| been shutting down stores, eliminating competition and
| dramatically raising prices. _And_ they 're trying to
| themselves merge.
|
| While those core goods prices are I believe accurate, the
| prices at point of sale have gone up significantly more -
| especially in places that went from having a competitive
| grocery market to, well not.
|
| Note that restaurants have done a significantly better job of
| controlling ingredient costs specifically because they don't
| shop at grocery chains.
| gruez wrote:
| >While those core goods prices are I believe accurate, the
| prices at point of sale have gone up significantly more -
| especially in places that went from having a competitive
| grocery market to, well not.
|
| CPI, as the name suggests, is based on _consumer_ prices.
| They 're not taking the price of wheat features and calling
| it a day.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm
| arcticbull wrote:
| I was typing too fast, lol, I meant to say "the prices at
| point of sale have gone up significantly more _for some
| people_. " Especially in places that used to have a
| competitive grocery environment. I think people tend to
| mistake their personal experiences for broader trends.
|
| Of course I agree with you about how CPI samples are
| taken and that they are representative of the market as a
| whole.
|
| tl;dr: I agree with you, I'm just floating a theory as to
| why some people may have significantly different
| experiences on a micro level.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _places that used to have a competitive grocery
| environment_
|
| This is what I'm seeing, anecdotally. In towns with more
| than one non-affiliated grocer, prices are cheap. In
| towns with consolidated groceries, prices are higher.
| Enough that the "savvy" shoppers, _i.e._ those with a car
| and time and liquidity to enable bulk buying, drive to
| the next town over.
| jwagenet wrote:
| It's pretty crazy to me that Kroger is looking to buy/merge
| with Albertsons (Safeway) with basically no opposition. I
| generally prefer Kroger brand stores, but I can't imagine
| this will be good for consumers in any sense.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| 20-30% is around what I see. I still think that's high for a
| period of 2 years (imagine that compounding over 10-20
| years...).
|
| There was a situation a while ago where egg prices really did
| "double or more" (about $1/egg in the worst places). But
| that's also the one place I've seen where prices went back
| down, and big brands got charged with collusion, and there
| was an avian flu epidemic on top of that.
| minkiebun wrote:
| FRED does a nice job of cataloguing prices of the most basic
| ingredients. The history on them makes clear that a lot of
| these stories round off to noise; people noticing things going
| up and not noticing when they stay flat or decline.
|
| Take for example eggs: they're up about 20% over the last two
| years... but they're down from 15 years ago, because eggs have
| (mostly) stayed really cheap for a long time.
|
| And that's not down in inflation adjusted dollars, it's just
| down.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yep. You need to go back to ~1996 to get to a 2x increase in
| cost of food at home:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d3aL
|
| Though as a general rule people notice acceleration not
| speed, so the big pandemic bump is clearly more impactful
| than a slower increase.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Is there a stat that tracks discount sale prices? I
| typically craft my purchases around what is discounted, but
| those "seem" dramatically worse than the general price
| increases.
| bombcar wrote:
| Eggs around here were as low as 29 cents (during an egg price
| war, to be fair, but normal prices were well below a buck)
| and during whatever egg crisis there was recently peaked at
| nearly $4 a dozen. Both were the same "cheapest eggs in the
| store" though the local farm-raised eggs had a much smaller
| increase (maybe from $4.29 to $4.79).
|
| Since then the cheapest eggs have come back down somewhat.
|
| The problem is statistics count averages or price on a
| certain day, etc, people remember the _highest_ price they
| paid recently.
| andy99 wrote:
| I wonder. There was an article I saw recently about the
| nutritional content of either grains or vegetables going down
| over time. Anecdotally a lot of meat is worse, either full of
| water or otherwise lower quality. There was something a few
| years ago about butter quality going down, reportedly because
| of how cows were being fed. Anyway you see my point. Even basic
| ingredients are subject to the same kinds of -flations.
| "Continuous improvement" is constantly ratcheting down quality.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I'd like to know if there's any way whole foods can get
| enshittified.
|
| Some people say there's a real difference in health between
| non-organic and organic foods, others say it's BS. Anecdotally,
| some people say the meat and produce from places like and
| Walmart are worse than those from places like Whole foods, and
| generics are worse than brand names, even ignoring organic vs.
| non-organic; but I wonder how much is placebo, and how much is
| a real difference in nutrition. I assume that some products are
| literally the same thing repackaged, but others are different
| in ways that matter.
|
| There's also things which are supposed to be monitored by the
| FDA, like using pesticides and injecting meat with saline. My
| understanding is that the FDA is pretty strict in the US but
| who knows?
|
| Foods like:
|
| - Fresh fruit and vegetables
|
| - Frozen fruit and vegetables
|
| - Canned fruit and vegetables
|
| - Eggs
|
| - Dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt)
|
| - Grains (oats, rice)
|
| - Fresh meat and fish
|
| - Frozen meat and fish
|
| - Canned meat and fish (e.g. canned chicken, tuna)
|
| - Ground meat
|
| - Seasoning
|
| - Olive oil, butter
| hammock wrote:
| USDA* not FDA
|
| You are only standing at the edge of the rabbit hole friend.
| Don't be afraid to take a few steps in
| jonatron wrote:
| New seed varieties made for growth and shelf life, greenhouse
| grown instead of field grown
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Yes but those are examples where it seems it doesn't
| matter, also GMOs.
|
| Simply using breeding, genetic engineering, and artificial
| growth to create more efficient and resilient crops isn't a
| bad thing, it only is if it somehow makes quality worse as
| a by-product. Even then, if the product is just less
| nutrient-dense, it's less of an issue than products with
| additives known to cause immune responses and other health
| issues (including pesticides which crop engineering can
| make redundant, so in some cases it's even a good thing).
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Simply using breeding, genetic engineering, and
| artificial growth to create more efficient and resilient
| crops isn't a bad thing, it only is if it somehow makes
| quality worse as a by-product.
|
| Have you met the Red Delicious Apple? It was grown
| specifically for shelf life and aesthetics and it became
| so mealy and tasteless that people stopped eating it. [1]
|
| [1] https://thecounter.org/history-economics-red-
| delicious-apple...
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I've done the comparison recently, the difference between the
| same brand from Whole Foods and Safeway for example is
| basically none, with Whole Foods selling it at a premium.
| However, the quality can vary if you buy a premium brand from
| Whole Foods vs the generic from Safeway.
| lozenge wrote:
| From what I understand, if you want to farm in a way that
| prioritises taste and quality over cost, you need to get that
| Organic certification. Otherwise, consumers will not pay for
| it.
|
| Meanwhile, you could also chase the Organic certification to
| fetch a higher price, but not care about the taste... then
| it's up to the buyer (mainly the grocery store) whether you
| reached their quality bar.
|
| I think there's a big regional variation as well. By the time
| the avocados get from CA to NJ, maybe the different offerings
| don't taste that different. But the opposite might be true
| for another foodstuff.
| hayesti wrote:
| Nice idea. A couple of small suggestions:
|
| - Perhaps choose some base rate of inflation and determine if the
| product price has increased in line with that or slower/faster.
|
| - Use a bold font to highlight the product weight.
|
| - Use an archived version of the product page today - that will
| reduce maintenance time moving forward.
|
| And a question: are you using net or gross weight? When using
| gross weight it may very well be an update in packaging that is
| impacting the reported number.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Also, there's a lot of questionable things going on here.
|
| For instance, a big red flag on the bacon that went from 90%
| pork to 89% pork. That sounds like a rounding error to me.
| Certainly not worthy of calling out.
|
| Then tomato sauce (a preserved product) moving from raw tomato
| to preserved tomato getting called out when by all accounts, I
| can't imagine why that would matter. The product is after all,
| a preserved tomato product. Benefit of the doubt I'd just call
| it a recipe change. It may be _better_ now. Just because it 's
| different doesn't make it worse.
|
| Finally the Chicken Tikka going from 26% marinated chicken to
| 14% _cooked_ marinated chicken. That line item includes the
| marinade in both cases - which evaporates during cooking. How
| much of that is lost water and fat? How much of that was just
| the marinade cooking off?
|
| Why is "deflation" just as red as "inflation" and "shitflation"
| - isn't that what you want? Lower prices?
|
| I'm confused, I think this is a pretty weak presentation all
| around.
|
| It would be really interesting to learn the magnitude of these
| effects but the way it's presented here it's hard to learn
| anything.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, shrinkflation is a number of small things like 90% pork
| to 89% pork. Do that 5-10 times, 1-2% at a time - and now
| you're at 75% pork.
|
| 26% marinated chicken to 14% cooked marinated chicken - what
| makes you think the lost fat made it into the meal, and
| wasn't skimmed off and sold off to (for example) a broth
| company, or a rendering plant?
|
| Maybe it was. If they could figure out how to make money off
| it though, chances are it wasn't.
|
| Also, how would you know it wasn't really 20% chicken cooked
| down to 14%?
|
| It's a good way to lose _actual_ calories and nutrients while
| thinking you 're not losing anything. Which is also either
| shitflation or shrinkflation, depending on how you count it.
|
| Totally agree on deflation, etc. though. That could also be
| from switching to reasonable quality ingredients to total
| crap ingredients that technically can be listed as the same
| thing on the label.
|
| The challenge in general is it's the economy wide equivalent
| of shaving silver dollars - lots of small, invisible losses
| done by potentially many individuals that eventually add up
| to real visible differences and economy wide losses. In a way
| it's really hard to figure out who actually stole things.
| jonatron wrote:
| > Then tomato sauce (a preserved product) moving from raw
| tomato to preserved tomato getting called out when by all
| accounts, I can't imagine why that would matter. The product
| is after all, a preserved tomato product. Benefit of the
| doubt I'd just call it a recipe change.
|
| Compare the nutrition information per 100g. Less carbs,
| sugars, fat, protein, fibre, but more salt.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Since the product always contained salt, perhaps they now
| add less salt to compensate for the salt present in the
| preserved tomato? Is tomato sauce getting saltier?
| lozenge wrote:
| The nutrition information would show salt regardless of
| which ingredient it came from.
| brvsft wrote:
| https://vegetarische.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/understanding-.
| ..
|
| > Tomato Puree
|
| > Made from cooked tomatoes that have been strained of seeds
| and skins. Often this is just "reconstituted tomato paste,"
| made by adding water to tomato paste. This product has weak
| tomato flavor and isn't called for in many recipes. Use in
| chilis, soups, and other long-cooked recipes where smooth,
| rich tomato texture is required. Many American commercial
| pasta sauces have tomato puree as their first ingredient
| (because tomato paste is cheaper to ship) which is why
| they're not as fresh tasting as homemade sauces. I don't
| think this exists in Germany, but it doesn't matter so much
| because you're going to be adding it to recipes that calls
| for long cooking times and many ingredients. If you have a
| recipe that calls for it, you can make it by adding water to
| tomato paste, or cooking down passierte tomatoes.
|
| No idea how accurate this is, but I would assume it's true
| and thus "partially reconstituted tomato puree" is less ideal
| for a pasta sauce (where you likely want more of a tomato
| flavor).
| karaterobot wrote:
| > For instance, a big red flag on the bacon that went from
| 90% pork to 89% pork. That sounds like a rounding error to
| me. Certainly not worthy of calling out.
|
| The reason you can say that there is no consequential
| difference being illustrated here is precisely because he
| recorded that difference. It's just data collection, it's not
| shady unless they hide the numbers and still draw the
| conclusions for you.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That would be fine if it were consistent, but in the tomato
| sauce only "tomato" is highlighted despite the tomato in
| both coming from tomato _and_ puree. What happened for the
| most part wasn 't a net decrease in tomato but a shift in
| the relative proportions of the kinds used. Why not
| highlight the shift in proportion instead of just the drop
| in one component?
|
| What happened wasn't a drop from 73% tomato to 46% tomato
| as the highlighting would have you believe. Instead it's a
| change from 73% tomato/14% puree (total 87% tomato) to 46%
| tomato/43% partially reconstituted puree (total 89%
| tomato). It's actually more tomato than ever - while
| costing 20% less.
|
| Calling this "shitflation" seems like quite an arbitrary
| judgement from someone who hasn't tried it? Especially when
| it's 1/5 less expensive. What if it tastes better? What if
| it takes less than 20% worse?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Can we get a DB for "Shitification".
| teddyh wrote:
| As soon as there is a metric for it.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I'd love to see this also and was hoping to see it in this
| page. I think it would need to be industry-specific, though,
| and the stats are hard to come by.
|
| For example, I fly a lot for work and have noticed delays and
| cancellations are a lot higher than they used to be. The data
| seems to support this in aggregate [1], but I'd like to see it
| by carrier.
|
| Service enshitification is a lot harder to quantify, but is
| definitely another thing I've noticed at checkouts,
| restaurants, etc.
|
| [1] https://www.transtats.bts.gov/homedrillchart.asp
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'd love to see legislation requiring _prominent_ advertising of
| any changes to a product that buyers might see as a negative.
| E.g.:
|
| - Smaller product quantity, when previously sold at an apparently
| similar quantity (secret shrinkflation).
|
| - Changes in food recipe (secret food enshitification).
|
| - (maybe) changes in nutritional value or flavor for farm
| produce. I'm not sure how this is possible or practical, but I'm
| thinking about claims that e.g. tomatoes taste worse and are less
| nutritious than they were a few decades ago.
|
| - Changes in non-food products that worsen performance. E.g., SSD
| makers switching to cheaper and slower components after initial
| reviews have come out, but still retaining the same product name.
| (secret non-food enshitification)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _legislation requiring prominent advertising of any changes
| to a product_
|
| Probably can't do this across the board. But one could
| certainly link trademark rights to it. The purpose of a
| trademark is to signal to consumers what they're buying, after
| all.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| This, uh, isn't a database? I clicked through to the GitHub and
| see only a hard coded html file with the small handful of Tesco
| comparisons, and a single screenshot. Where is the database? What
| am I missing? Why is this interesting?
| jen20 wrote:
| The Wikipedia page defines a database as an organized
| collection of data, which is what this is.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Would you share a reply that is more helpful than this
| "technically correct" reply? IE what is this "database"
| useful for? Why is it noteworthy? I'm genuinely curious.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| There are few things in life more irritating than opening a bag
| of chips and its only 1/3 full. Its all a scam
| JohnMakin wrote:
| That is not what this is. The amount of chips and the
| ingredients in the bag will usually be fairly consistent. The
| effect you're describing is due to packaging, where things like
| chips will settle to the bottom of the package over time and
| during shipping.
| lozenge wrote:
| Yes, there's always been air in the bag, but not like this.
|
| Food inflation has been over 10% for two years now in the UK
| so it's been very noticeable.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I am not disputing inflation in the UK, but rather the fact
| that chip bags consisting of mostly air is not an effect of
| inflation.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Sure, its just intentionally misleading and irritating. I
| very much doubt the bag was full when it left the factory and
| is only 1/3 full at purchase due to settling
| geodel wrote:
| Well, weight is written on package. Not sure if one really
| expects 3 times more chips for that weight.
| lozenge wrote:
| Do you remember what was written on the package last time you
| bought it? Times the 100 products you buy. Will you notice
| the new void added at the bottom of the jar? Or the gap
| between servings hidden under the label and around the
| transparent window?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| how much does a chip weigh? Do you check weights on all of
| the products you purchase. Having a back that is 2/3 empty
| and filled with air is clearly intended to mislead.
| geodel wrote:
| Well, very few items. Also, I am surprised in almost ten years
| prices have not gone up by much and quantity reduction is just
| about ~10%.
|
| Seems to me these much-maligned supermarkets are giving better
| value to customers than much-loved restaurants.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Fantastic idea, particularly the 'shit' part IMO.
|
| Realistically can the average person care enough to use this
| information, to measure value? Possibly some abstraction and
| scale for more casual comparison would be useful.
|
| Normalising the idea of this kind of data and having a historical
| frame of reference like this would/could be a pretty solid
| resource, especially when looking at particular brands.
| vondur wrote:
| Lol, "Shitflation" sounds like something Lahey would say from the
| Trailer Park Boys TV show.
| carlo2 wrote:
| Nice.
|
| I've got a constantly growing dataset of price and quantity
| history for all products in one supermarket's database (Ocado,
| the online-only supermarket in the UK I shop at). Doesn't include
| ingredients at the moment, but I do like the idea of that. Also
| only a few months of data so far.
|
| Anyway, I've made it available as a website in a way that is
| hopefully useful - it is to me at least: https://ocamatic.uk/
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(page generated 2023-12-22 23:02 UTC)