Grocery Shrink Ray Makes Yogurt Smaller, Salt Slightly Bigger

When food companies shave a little bit of their product off to save money and avoid a price hike, that’s called the Grocery Shrink Ray. We’ve followed how it’s been blasting through food products for over 100 years now, and it made two small hits in Dannon brand yogurt and Aldi’s store-brand sea salt.

The sea salt was hit with what tipster Brian calls the “embiggen ray,”
since a change to the packaging made the package of sea salt crystals slightly larger. Very, very slightly: the older package was 3.14 ounces, and the new version has 3.15 ounces of salt. The difference may not even be a whole crystal.

In the national name brands, Michael noticed that his Dannon yogurt shrank a little bit along with a packaging change. The size change did bring the package down to a nice, even 150 grams, which companies sometimes do to harmonize their products sold in the U.S. and Canada.

Or they were just taking a spoonful out of the yogurt container to avoid raising the price.

“I wonder how many consumers will notice this change,” observant tipster Michael wrote to Consumerist. “I am sure in the not too distant future, spoonable yogurt will soon only come in a spoonful size.” That would not be very eco-friendly packaging,