Are food portions becoming smaller in size?

While doing the usual grocery store run, I noticed the trend becoming more and more common among big food giants. The portions of food are becoming obviously smaller. Now I'm not talking about the extra air in the bag of potato chips that is always half filled with air and the other half chips. Cereal, cheese, sausage and other breakfast items are smaller in portion. Ground beef comes in half the size that it used to come in just five years ago. The family size is the way to go, even for consumers without families. The prices of the items either stays the same or increases, but the quantity of the product decreases. Imagine the households with multiple children who naturally have growing appetites. Mom and dad now have to double, even triple the amount of purchases. That means about five boxes of cereal for a family with let's say two kids (we all know how kids love to go through one box). As I stated in a previous post last year that I cringed when I saw the price of one block of cheese from Cracker Barrel that was every bit of $5. Is cheese becoming the new delicacy because of it's price? Cheese is a necessity in any household like eggs, milk and bread. Dairy products in general are unreasonably high and several of their products have fallen victim to the "smaller portion" trend.




The first thing that I learned months ago and have tried to stick to is buying generic brands of food and household products. I learned that some generic brands taste just as good as the name brand products. I never used coupons in the past because many of the coupons in the weekly circulars I didn't consume. I now look for coupons for many of the products that I consume now. Balancing and saving those pennies from coupons help out. Some local chain super markets also offer $10 off coupons from time to time. So while that family size bag of Lay's chips is filled with what seems like 20 chips, the consumer can find other ways to save at the market. It's kind of hard to stretch out smaller portions of food making leftovers for lunch the following day almost nil. If you can find your own ways to saving @ the checkout line, you can share your tips here. Sphere: Related Content