Recessions' impact on supermarket products

[OilSheikh]

What about Walker's crisp packets? Half of the packet is full of air

[Butcher]

What about Walker's crisp packets? Half of the packet is full of air

I believe that's deliberate as it means the crisps get crushed less easily. You're paying for a given weight of crisps anyway, not for a full bag.

[peterb]

I believe that's deliberate as it means the crisps get crushed less easily. You're paying for a given weight of crisps anyway, not for a full bag.

But it does lead you to believe that you are getting more than you actually get!

[SeriousSam]

The contents of a Walkers crisps bag have decreased in weight over the years, but as far as I'm aware the pack size hasn't. It's only a matter of a few grammes but that is still enough to create an observable "fullness" difference. It's all down to rising ingredient costs and previously higher energy costs, which for the most part were absorbed.

Now there was an article in Which a couple of years back about this; which from memory the manufacturers argued that people didn't want to pay more but would accept slightly less. Yet the survey by Which suggested the opposite. Now from a cynic perspective you might say that keeping people buying "less" for the same price is a good way to keep sales, whereas increasing them would likely have a negative impact.

[tepo]

Cornettos ......

[SeriousSam]

Some of us still remember the old "Just one cornetto, give it to me. You must be joking, they're 50p".

[kalniel]

Worldwide food prices are falling: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34211715

[TooNice]

Does this get passed down onto consumers though?

[shaithis]

While prices may appear to be on the rise and sizes/weights on the decrease, I have found that the amount of offers around to be quite high.

Whenever I go shopping I find at least half my shopping list is an offer, the rest are mainly rollback prices. Some things are pricey, but that's life. You do not have to buy <insert brand name>, there will almost certainly be cheaper alternatives if you feel a product isn't worth it's cost. For instance, I don't give a damn what hand wash I get for the bathroom, I don't care too much what washing powder I use, I don't care whose egg noodles I use. I'll just buy what's on special offer........and if it's a non-perishable good and the offer is good, I may buy a LOT of it. Buying special offers in bulk can save you a lot. You may find that the first several weeks you spend more, after that it starts to pay dividends.

I used to buy all the top food brands but in recent years have learnt that you really do not need to and I have also found that buying raw ingredients tends to make things cheaper......stop with the conveniences already

[kalniel]

Does this get passed down onto consumers though?

I'm not sure. It certainly doesn't seem to be helping the supermarkets as they're all doing quite badly at the moment.

[Millennium]

On bread, the small , loaves isn't entirely a bad thing, though. We find a loaf typically lasts 2 days ... not because it's stale or going mouldy, but because we've eaten it. So, our bread is fresher. And as a by-product, I make breadcrumbs and use those for cooking, like breaded chicken, rather than buying pre-coated chicken breasts.

So before, I'd buy stuffed chicken breasts. Now, I stuff and breadcrumb my own. It works out cheaper, I control exactly what goes in, and they taste better too. And, when I make the crumb, I can decide on the fly if I want to include a little cheese, or herbs, or pepper, in the breadcrumbs.

Or, for a spag-bol, instead of a typically UK version, I buy less mince but higher quality mince, and let time (about 3 or 4 hours) reduce it (and a more genuinely Bolognese ingredient list) and I wind up with a much more intensely flavoured proper ragu, rather than spaghetti (or tagliatelle in my case) and tomato-flavoured mince.

Or, relatively simple ingredients in a slow cooker, cutting down on the meat element, increase the veg, and let time do the work. And because it's cooked long and slow, I can use 'unfashionable' cuts of meat that can be, comparatively, very cheap and ironically, the cuts with the most flavour.

Or, increasingly, I grow my own herbs. I make my own peanuts butter, using ONLY peanuts. I buy while spices, seeds, etc, and grind, toast, whatever I need when I need it. It's SO much better flavour, but does require a little time and effort.

Or, there's a HUGE range of soups you can make that are relatively cheap, relatively easy, use fresh and nutritious ingredients and blow away the taste of anything coming out of a can. Home-made fresh soup, home-made fresh bread, even home-made butter if you wish ..... heaven.

I'm not suggesting it's a total answer to rising prices. Not at all. It's not, for me, even entirely motivated by prices. It's more, in my case, about quality control. And flavour. But the point was, I'm more selective about what I buy, but tend to use less of the expensive bits, like meat.

And one more classic example. Bacon. Hunt down a good quality, dry cure bacon, and fry a rasher of that to a similar weight rasher of typical bacon from a supermarket. Once cooked, once all the plumping up water and chemicals have cooked out, the supermarket bacon ends up a shriveled little item about half the size of what it was when it went in tne pan. The dry-cured rasher, though, will be almost exactly the same size as when it went in.

So, the cost per gram, uncooked, make the dry-cured 'quality' bacon look rather expensive, but compared to the weight once cooked, when you need maybe half to a third as much, because it doesn't shrink, and it's actually cheaper. And oh, the taste.

I get dry-cured bacon either from a butcher-friend in Nottinghamshire, who sources his meats from local farms, or from a local farm shop near me that specialises in Aberdeen Angus beef, but gets their bacon from a Devon-based dry-cure bacon specialist .... and they supply beef to the Devon bacon specialist.

Typically, prices are actually about the same as supermarkets, sometimes even a bit cheaper than supermarkets. Quality, though? IMHO, far, FAR higher. I just have to be prepared to invest the time to hunt down the suppliers rather than cop-out and pop into Tesco.

Oh, more more really fine thing.

Don't be seduced into using meat in the quantity a supermarket wants to sell it in. Instead of using, say, 450g of minced beef because that's the size of pack in comes in, consider .... can I used 400g, or 350g, etc, in this recipe? Maybe counter that with an extra carrot, or whatever.

I buy meat in 'bulk', but bulk defined in domestic terms. I buy, usually from that butcher or farm shop, and I use a vacuum sealer to bag it into quanities I want to use, not what the supermarket wants to sell. Then, freeze it.

It's good to know you have your stuff together, Saracen.

As for the original post, it's great you are aware of the problem, I just think you need to shop further afield (if possible), Lidl seems good value, and Aldi was not bad last time I made a trip there. The number of people with a preferred Food shop, or a preferred (irrational) maker....

[darmz]

What about Walker's crisp packets? Half of the packet is full of air

hell i remember the days of 16p per packet and they were full!, now you pay triple the price and get half the crisps