Less Product, Same Price

From: NPR
Market Place
February 16, 2009
6:30 PM -7:00 PM

"With the price commodities going up this year Luby says shrinking containers might be the lesser of three evils. The other two being cheaper ingredients, which would change the taste of your peanut butter, or alienating even the most loyal consumers with higher shelf prices. Now, Skippy is made by Unilever, a food conglomerate that also put a dent in the bottom of Hellmann's mayonnaise and shrank your carton of Breyer's ice cream. No one there would go on tape but when I raised the deception question, a spokesman said the new weight is clearly marked on the package. And Frank Luby says the per ounce and per pound labels on the grocery shelf really help.
Luby: So, yes, it's deceptive. But I think it would be even more deceptive if you didn't have that level playing field that's created by the per ounce comparisons, which we can take a close look at when we go to the supermarket."

You can hear the story, titled "Less product, same price", on the Marketplacewebsite,athttp://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/02/16/pm_deceptive_packaging/