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Is there a term similar to "shrinkflation" when food is made cheaper instead of smaller? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I assume you mean the quality is quietly reduced without notifying the consumer? I've heard Cheapflation and Skimpflation.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago

"Cheapflation" sounds exactly like what I was thinking of. https://www.brusselstimes.com/1021212/not-so-fishy-fish-sticks-what-is-cheapflation-and-what-to-pay-attention-to

In Albert Heijn's fish sticks, the fish content dropped from 75% to 55%.

Eeewwww

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Enshittification

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

That's a much broader term.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's what I originally thought, but I've only seen that term for tech stuff. Wikipedia describes it as "a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I've see it used a lot recently to describe the general degradation of quality in service of increasing profits. I think technically, it is not enshittification. Below is my general definition of the process enshittification describes. Repost from another comment.

Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

A word that includes the word "shit" in it has a very nice ring to it when describing things getting generally shittier in favor of profit. I suppose language can evolve rapidly and things mean what people believe them to mean.

Edit: As per Wikipedia's Shrinkflation Entry:

Skimpflation involves a reformulation or other reduction in quality.

I see skimpflation as a form of shrinkflation. The idea is still that the price stays the same but to try and hide the cost increase from the customer they give you less. I guess fewer strawberries per "smoothie" is even more subtle than fewer ounces of the original "smoothie" formula per bottle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Well said. Skimpflation describes exactly what I'm talking about. It's subtle, because they're banking on the fact that people won't notice immediately and then will gradually accept the new recipe. Probably the same reason that people remember Cadbury Cream Eggs being better when they were kids - and a million other tiny things.