Popular Foods That Are Quietly Shrinking In Size

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By now, you've probably heard of shrinkflation — and even if you haven't, you've probably experienced it. Although the act of making products smaller while keeping their prices the same isn't new, it's received renewed attention in the last few years due to folks exposing the companies that partake in it on social media. What's also made it more obvious, though, is the sheer amount that some food manufacturers have shrunk their products. Side-by-side comparisons of popular items like Chips Ahoy! Cookies, Pop-Tarts, and Pringles have shown a dramatic reduction in size over the years, without the companies that make them saying a word.

Naturally, food manufacturers don't just reduce the size of their products for the fun of it. The recent economic turmoil and price increases on raw ingredients have led companies to make some tough decisions about how much food they can actually offer for the price, with items getting smaller as opposed to prices getting higher. What's pretty wild, though, is how much less you get for your money these days — and how many items have shrunk.

Of all of the cookies that have gotten smaller over the last few years, few have done it so obviously as Chips Ahoy!. Its famous chocolate chip cookies have not only gotten smaller, but also thinner and less numerous. The number of cookies in each Chips Ahoy! pack has slowly but surely reduced, and the weight of each package has dropped by several ounces. The new, slimmed-down dimensions of the cookies haven't gone unnoticed by customers, either. "Just got a pack and they are like wafers!" Said one person on Reddit.

Not only that, but people have also identified a serious decline in the actual flavor of the cookies themselves. "They're such low quality now. Not enough chips to call themselves Chips Ahoy either. Maybe Chip Ahoy," stated another cookie aficionado on Reddit, with others noting that the image on the box is now pretty misleading, given what you actually get when you open it up. It's always sad to see a beloved snack item deteriorate, and it doesn't look like they're going to get bigger again any time soon.

Hungry-Man dinners used to promise that they'd sate your appetite — but now, you're more likely to be left just as starving as the name indicates. Folks have noticed that slowly but surely, Hungry-Man frozen entrées have gotten smaller and smaller, both in terms of weight and quantity. Since the 2000s, these meals have lost a whopping 77 grams from the weight of each package, and food compartments that were once overflowing with grub are now half-filled and bare. It seems like Hungry-Man is now resorting to watering down some of their ingredients, and it doesn't take a genius to tell: Take just one look at the mashed potatoes you get in these dinners, and you'll see how gloopy they are.

As well as this, Hungry-Man has also been shaving the protein content from its meals. A picture comparing two Hungry-Man Salisbury steak meals posted on Reddit shows that within a year, the portion went from having 26 grams of protein to just 21 grams. At the time of writing this article, that same Salisbury steak meal purchased at Walmart still has 21 grams of protein.

If you want to make yourself a Betty Crocker cake, be prepared for it to be a little smaller than you might have been used to — and for your baked goods to be completely ruined as a result. In 2024, Betty Crocker decided to shrink the size of its cake mix boxes, without telling anyone. Its cake mixes went from weighing 15.25 ounces to 13.25 ounces, a weight that they have remained at to this day. It wasn't the first time it made them smaller, either, and nor was it the only company to do so: Pillsbury and Duncan Hines also decided to shrink their cake products.

Not only was that not great news for people who like their cakes with a little heft to them, but it also meant that the tried-and-tested ratios that some folks had stuck to for years were now completely out of whack. If you hadn't noticed the change, and you stuck to the same amount of milk and eggs that you normally would, then your cake would be a wet, undercooked mess. "Baking is a science. You can't just shrink the contents like with finished product or cooking/grilling goods," observed one person on Reddit. They weren't wrong.

Few food products have been shrunk as sneakily as Twizzlers have. This candy is renowned for its super-long length, and anybody who picks up a pack of them in the store would likely not notice that they'd got any smaller. Well, that's because the package they come in remains the same length. Now, though, when you open them up, you'll find that your Twizzlers don't fill the package as they used to, but instead are cut off at just over the halfway point. If we weren't so annoyed about them doing this, we'd admire the smart nature of managing to reduce the size of the food while not having to change the packaging in any way. However, we are annoyed. Very, very annoyed.

It's not just original Twizzlers that have been made smaller. Its Pull n Peel and Super Nibs varieties are now also much smaller, with the latter being hidden by its horizontal packaging. If Twizzlers hadn't discontinued so many flavors, we're sure those would have gotten smaller, too. What's even more wild is that while Twizzlers certainly haven't been getting cheaper, they also haven't been staying the same price. In fact, over the last few years, they've actually been steadily getting more expensive, while simultaneously shrinking in size.

Few examples of shrinkflation have been as subtle as Simply Orange's diminishing size. The Coca-Cola-produced OJ used to come in bottles that were a sizable 64 ounces, but these were then reduced to 59 ounces. Coca-Cola subsequently decided to slash a further three ounces from each bottle, before whittling them down further to 49 ounces. It then made a further reduction, and now, Simply Orange weighs 46 ounces per bottle. That's a whopping 18 ounces shaved off its original size, approximately a third of the current capacity.

In a stunning feat of engineering, the new bottles don't look that much different from the old ones. Unless you were an eagle-eyed observer, you might not even notice that you were getting less product. Simply Orange isn't the only orange juice brand to have done this, either. In late 2024, Tropicana infuriated customers by reducing the size of its bottles, slashing them by 6 ounces, while simultaneously changing their distinctive design. It looks like no brand is safe from shrinkflation, sadly.

If you want to see shrinkflation in action, look no further than Oreo sandwich cookies. Perhaps the most famous example of a food product getting smaller, Oreos used to be chunky, sizable cookies, and now they're hardly more than a couple of wafers with a smear of filling inside. Customers have repeatedly pointed out that the amount of filling has dropped dramatically, with the picture on the packaging not accurately representing the actual product. What's more, the double-stuffed version now feels as though it's filled with a regular amount of creme — so what are you actually paying more for?

In 2023, Mondelēz, Oreo's parent company, stated that it hadn't altered the cookie-to-creme ratio, and that it's committed to keeping Oreos as high-quality as possible. If the former statement is true, then it must be using some kind of sorcery here (or else its manufacturing processes aren't great), as it definitely seems as though there's less in there. On top of this, customers have observed that the weight of Oreo packages has slightly reduced, with the price remaining the same. Mondelēz and Nabisco needs to be careful: If they're not, they'll ruin an iconic product for good.

Who remembers Pop-Tarts being rectangular? Most of us do, right? Ever since it was in its early days, the humble Pop-Tart has had a good length to it, as they're designed to slot into a toaster with the same dimensions as a slice of sandwich bread. More recently, though, people have been noticing that their Pop-Tarts are looking a bit more square than they'd like. Numerous folks have pointed out that Pop-Tarts are about a half-inch shorter in length, with Kellanova (the company that makes them) not even making the effort to change the size of its packaging.

That's not the only way that all those Pop-Tarts flavors have changed, either. A lot of people have said that the frosting on every tart, which used to spread all the way to the end of the pastry, is now often just a smudge in the middle of each piece. They also seem to have shrunk in size, there's noticeably less filling and they're both thinner and drier than they used to be. Man, Kellanova has really dropped the ball on this product, huh?

One of the more brazen examples of shrinkflation in recent memory can be seen in the ever-decreasing size of the Pringles can. Over the years, it hasn't gone unnoticed that Pringles tubes have lost several ounces, having been whittled down from 165 grams to 150 grams, and in some places even 134 grams. Not only have each tube gotten thinner, but they've also gotten shorter – and people have also observed that the sheer size of each chip has also reduced, so that now they rattle around in the tube as opposed to being snugly packed.

If that wasn't bad enough, Pringles is also varying its tube sizes in plain sight, while still charging customers the same price for each. At Walmart, for instance, its Sour Cream and Onion flavor comes in a 5.5-ounce tube, while its Original flavor comes in one weighing 5.2 ounces. However, both of these tubes cost the same amount. We're not quite sure how it justifies that one, and we certainly aren't happy about paying more for less.

Now, we don't know about you, but when we buy a carton of ice cream, we want it to feel like there's enough inside to last us a while — or at least until we get a brain freeze. However, Breyers has cruelly snatched that away from us by reducing its cartons to pretty teeny proportions. Standard cartons of Breyers ice cream used to have a half-gallon of product in each one, but that's gradually been reduced as time has gone on. At some point, it decided to shrink its cartons to 1.66 liters, or 56 ounces. Then, it made them smaller once more, and its standard size is now 1.41 liters, or 1.5 quarts.

It's not like Breyers has gotten noticeably cheaper, either. At Walmart, this newly sized carton will still set you back almost four dollars. Understandably, customers aren't super pleased with these products getting smaller, and some of them blame Breyers' acquisition by food giant Unilever for the reduction, as well as its general quality declining. Sadly, given how much life and vitality mega-corporations can suck out of products when they get their hands on them, we wouldn't be surprised.

Few companies actually admit to shrinkflation, but every now and again, they decide to be honest with their customers. When they do, they often try and spin it to make it seem like they're doing you a favor. This is what Frito-Lay did when it was accused of shrinking the amount of Doritos in each of its packages, while blaming the move on higher costs of living after the COVID-19 pandemic. "Inflation is hitting everyone," said a Frito-Lay representative to QZ. "We took just a little bit out of the bag so we can give you the same price and you can keep enjoying your chips." So the company's admitting to making its product smaller, but won't drop the price as a result. Right...

It seems as though this weight reduction has been incremental, too. Customers have noticed that Doritos bags have been inching down in weight, going from 260 grams to 235 grams, and then reducing once again to 210 grams. Open up a bag now, and you'll be greeted with a lot of air and not a lot of chips.