Daftest downsizing cockup!!!

[Sakkarin Profile]

I've moaned before about manufacturers who reduce the size of their packaging to make more money out of us, but this example is the saddest penny-pinching cock-up I've ever come across!!!

As I'm in Laksa mode, I've just looked on Yeo's website for their Laksa recipe, and it calls for 185g of their laksa paste. This seemed rather a lot to get out of the tiny little jar I've just looked at at Tesco, so on the same website, I checked out their actual products page. Clicking through to "buy now", it seems the jar is only 150g! If you took them at face value, you would have to buy two jars to make one lot of Laksa!

It was immediately obvious that they have downsized the product to make more money, but have forgotten to change it on the website. I went downstairs to check my old jar of Yeo's Laksa Paste I'm about to throw out, and YES, it is 185g! Swizz. And stupid.

Even more idiotic, I've just noticed that the product photo on the website is still of a 185g jar.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

It's on a par with all those products that carefully tabulate the nutrition information for a serving, but the serving size has no resemblance to the pack size (and the pack size is not reasonably divisible by the serving size)

For example Weightwatcher's wine comes in quarter bottles, 187.5 ml
But the nutrition information is given in terms of a small (125 m) glass

I wonder how many would be slimmers notice the discrepancy?
(Don't get any, it's vile)

[hungryhousewife Profile]

I would think that was a case for Trading Standards.

HH

[Suelle Profile Website]

Philly cream cheese has downsized from 300g to 280g. Not a problem in itself, but a lot of my older cheesecake recipes are in multiples of 300g, so to get the right weight you either have to buy an extra pack, or one of the smaller packs, which are proportionally more expensive.

Fortunately the recipe I used at Christmas took account of the new pack size and was so good that it will become my standard recipe from now on - until they downsize again!

[Sakkarin Profile]

By coincidence, I was in Poundland a few days ago, and noticed they stocked Philadelphia, but in 180g packs (if I remember right), and I wondered what size the standard pack was (I know Poundland get downsized packs, but I guess they have an excuse...).

[Rainbow Profile]

Philly cream cheese has downsized from 300g to 280g. Not a problem in itself, but a lot of my older cheesecake recipes are in multiples of 300g, so to get the right weight you either have to buy an extra pack, or one of the smaller packs, which are proportionally more expensive.

Fortunately the recipe I used at Christmas took account of the new pack size and was so good that it will become my standard recipe from now on - until they downsize again!

Over here, in Oz, the standard Philly size is 250g and the recipes on the pack all use that amount or multiples of it. It's been that size for as long as I can remember.

Any chance of getting that very good recipe you mentioned, Suelle?

[Badger's Mate Profile]

Please forgive me if I've misread the details, but hasn't the nominal quantity of the laksa paste changed from 185g to 150ml?

Given that it probably contains a reasonable amount of solids, is it not possible that 150ml is in fact 185g or something like it?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I would think that was a case for Trading Standards.

HH

What could they do?

All the information is accurate - just unhelpful

Given that it probably contains a reasonable amount of solids, is it not possible that 150ml is in fact 185g or something like it?

Not many foods would be dense enough for that I don't think that's a density of 1.23 g/ml, which is on a par with bone

[Suelle Profile Website]

Any chance of getting that very good recipe you mentioned, Suelle?

This is the recipe:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/choc ... cheesecake

I think it could be easily adapted to make flavours other than orange, and the topping could be left off. It was very soft and creamy after baking - almost like a soft set cheesecake. The only issue I had was that the cheesecake mix was so runny that some seeped out of my springform tin; I either need a new tin with a better seal, or a liner to prevent seepage between the base and sides of the tin.

This is my blog post about it:
http://mainlybaking.blogspot.co.uk/2015 ... ecake.html

[Sakkarin Profile]

I hadn't noticed that is was ml not grams and was about to concede defeat, however I just tested the 185g jar I've got and 150ml comes up to just below the top of the label. As you can see from my original pic above from the Yeo site, the jar comes filled to the top.

[Petronius Profile]

I would think that was a case for Trading Standards.

HH

What could they do?

In the good old days when they had plenty of staff, they would've taken up any discrepancy in terms of advertising – now I doubt it. Worth a try. A friend of ours took on Kleenex when they 're-designed' their Men's Tissue range, advertising said something on the lines of smaller pack with the same number of sheets, though that wasn't the case. I can't remember now whether she used Trading Standards or tackled them on her own. Knowing her, she did it. Why not do the same Sakkarin?

Tesco's can't afford to have any bad publicity.

[Joanbunting Profile]

Tesco's can't afford to have any bad publicity.

I think that should read "Any more"

I bought a tub of Philly last week to make carrot cake frosting and it was 250g

One thing I have noticed is that Atora suet - (well how else can you make Christmas puds and mince and dumplings?) used to be 8 oz then suddenly became 200g.

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Don't crisps regularly do this?
I have a vague recollection they went down to 25g packets, which were like eating fresh air.
Must check to see how much is in them nowadays, as there seems to be a good enough portion.

I used to have an excellent calorie controlled leaflet in my 20s, that had avocados and bananas as a piece of fruit, eg 1 avocado = 200 calories.
No nonsense.

But I looked the other day for a little reference book, and everything was in exactly 100g. Egg, 100g.
I think an egg is about 50-60g? So I'd have to divide the amount.
What a faffle.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

There are several quite dense foodstuffs, mostly involving high concentrations of solutes, so honey, treacle, Marmite are all about 1.4g/cc and chocolate about 1.3, iirc. More pertinently maybe, jaggery and palm sugar are similar, and miso is about 1.2. I would guess that tamarind paste is also dense, so it's not such an unreasonable suggestion.


That said, from Sakkarin's little test it looks as though there was a genuine change in pack size.

One thing to be mindful of when comparing pack sizes is whether or not the container has been filled to a minimum or average fill. In the EU the latter is denoted by an 'e' after the nominal quantity. About 30 years ago there was a move in the UK towards average fills and so something that had been 100g minimum was now 105g or 110g average. There was a spate of labelling products as '10% extra free' or similar, when they were nothing of the sort. Alternatively, 100g suddenly became smaller...

As I understand it there is not a legal requirement to adopt an average fill, so some of the jars in your cupboard would be labelled with an 'e' and some not. I don't know if there is a similar system outside the EU,(surely there is) nor how you could distinguish between average and minimum fill elsewhere. Presumably goods imported into the EU should be labelled according to EU regulations, how rigorously that applies to items purchased off the internet or at your local Chinese wholesale warehouse I cannot say.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Don't crisps regularly do this?
I have a vague recollection they went down to 25g packets, which were like eating fresh air.
Must check to see how much is in them nowadays, as there seems to be a good enough portion.

I used to have an excellent calorie controlled leaflet in my 20s, that had avocados and bananas as a piece of fruit, eg 1 avocado = 200 calories.
No nonsense.

But I looked the other day for a little reference book, and everything was in exactly 100g. Egg, 100g.
I think an egg is about 50-60g? So I'd have to divide the amount.
What a faffle.

I think it I very hard to get the calorie count thing right

I get very annoyed with recipes for 5:2 that are supposed to be "accurately counted" - but contain such ingredients as "! potato" (size and type unspecified, and critical for a 300 cal dish given I've seen 700g spuds) and I've also seen a US recipe that required "1 ball of mozzarella" in a 200 cal recipe - when I checked the sums it needed only half a ball of "lite" mozzarella to hit the calorie count, and in the US you get a range of sizes of mozzarella most of them bigger than the UK ones!

I suppose ideally you'd give both per 100g and then a typical value - if you use online counters or apps they mostly let you choose your "serving size" (1 med banana, 100g, 4 oz etc.) which seems to me the easiest way of coping

[Petronius Profile]

Not quite the same, apart from the general principle of trying to fool us. There was a piece in yesterday's Times about 'Free from' products. One example given, Sainsbury's I think, was tins of normal tomatoes at 50p (which just happen not to have gluten) compared to their Gluten Free tinned tomatoes at £1.50 and smaller quantity.

[jeral Profile]

Re Free From pricing, products will be more expensive if made in free-from factories as they can't employ economies of scale; also slower shelf-space turnover. I'm guessing that probably doesn't justify a massive 3x price though for tomatoes...

Wasn't crisp pack size reduced to appear healthier by having fewer calories per pack, before low-fat crisps were invented? A bit like Weightwatchers ready meals which were shown sometimes to be low calorie only because there was less in the pack, ho hum.

Definitely need digital gram scales and a calculator these days. As Joanbunting said about 8oz suet downsized to 200g. I know everything has to be metric so is it dinosaur-like not to learn to think in grams these days?

[Joanbunting Profile]

I do think in metric most of the time Jeral but when my recipe, or rather my garndmother's recipe requires 8oz I bitterly resent having to by 150g extra. How many people outside the UK use suet ????? Come to think of it how many younger cooks use it?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I notice in Germany everything that IS gluten free seems to have the badge on the pack -- they seem to order things the other way round, so if you need gluten free everything in your basket will be badged, not reading glasses required!

Same as their road crossings (the lovely Ampelmann) scared me for ages, they seemed to give you such a short green signal, then I realised in the UK the green signal used to stay lit pretty much as long as it is safe to stay on the crossing but in Berlin the logic is that if he is green, it's safe to step off the pavement and start crossing (which is kind of where we are going with the countdown crossings, which I like)

Ampelann (unofficial mascot of Berlin)

[Sakkarin Profile]

SMALLTEASERS...

I just bought a bag of Maltesers for £1, and it felt quite full, which made me wonder how it compared to the boxes of Maltesers that they often sell for £1. Fortunately I still had the box from some I had a couple of weeks ago, and yes, you do get more in the bag. ONE GRAM MORE!!! 120g in the box, 121g in the bag!

The first thought that crossed my mind was "Ha! You get an extra Malteser in the bag"! But the curious thing is that it doesn't necessarily mean you get one extra Malteser, as they weigh over 2 grams each....

Not really a "downsizing" crime, just odd.