Shoppers have become all but too familiar with Shrinkflation – when brands and supermarkets reduce the size of products while charging the same amount for them.
But with the soaring cost of raw materials, there’s a subtle new tweak manufacturers are making behind the scenes, and shopping are starting to notice.
Customers. already battling with the cost-of-living crisis, are now claiming their favourite products are looking and tasting slightly different.
And it’s all down to the latest trick-of-the-trade: Skimpflation.
The subtle art of quietly reformulating recipes or downgrading ingredients in a bid to keep costs down.
With the war in Ukraine making certain products more scarce, brands are reducing expensive ingredients such as olive oil in foods.
In many cases there is no information on packaging to indicate anything has changed.
For example, olive oil butter spreads, including supermarket own brands and Bertolli now contain less olive oil, while some packs have even shrunk in size as well.
Sainsbury’s olive spread, which it says is made with ‘mediterranean olive oil’ used to contain 21% olive oil, but now has just 10%.