Consumers are angry about food again; this time, their gripe is shrinking portions sizes.
Try as the government might to subsidize against market fluctuations, the market always prevails. “Food inflation” is as real as monetary inflation, and the great American recession has hit food producers as hard as it’s hit the rest of us.
It’s called “chiseling,” and this time it doesn’t refer to your washboard abs — at least not directly. Chiseling is the practice of selling marginally smaller packages for about the same price.
If market demand doesn’t cover increased production costs for that same 6-ounce can of tuna, the manufacturer has to sell a 5-oz can. Chiseling is smart business. The alternative is to keep failing to cover costs for those same 6 ounces, and eventually go out of business.
Chiseling isn’t just smart business; the policy aligns perfectly with government priorities. First Lady Michelle Obama wants a national size-awareness campaign? Great; smaller packages mean fewer calories. Green initiatives pushing for less packaging? Fantastic; smaller boxes use less cardboard.
But wait! What if you just want to nourish yourself and your family?
Sadly, market demands (like finding the most nutritious options for your family) have to compete with the enormous artificial “demand” that is government subsidy.
To understand market cues, look to the facts on the ground. FLOTUS is pushing a get-fit agenda even while our government subsidizes corn syrup, sugar, and wheat. Green special interests are the baptists to these bootleggers: Shared goals make for unlikely bedfellows. Portion shrinkage is good for everyone, except the consumer — but since when is business about what the consumer wants?
The diet industry is business. Non-fat yogurt purveyors want to help dieting folks lose weight, but if everyone were happy with our girths there’d be little market for less-flavorful yogurts.
Same goes for the greenies. Ostensibly their goal is to get us all back to prehistoric emissions levels — but by printing their message in magazines and airing “green” TV ads they contribute to just the emissions build-up they caution against.
Under the FLOTUS initiative, the market must be clamoring for healthy options. But don’t let the health halo confuse you: “Diet” options are not the same thing as “healthy” options. Those less-filling non-fat yogurts can hardly sustain an adult til lunch, so enter pre-portioned oreos and cheese sticks and it doesn’t take much to see that here is an industry with an agenda.
Get-fit incentives should counsel consumers to breeze right past the diet industry’s push towards unsustainable calorie counts into the healthy territory of moderation. Instead we’re seeing growth at the extreme ends of the spectrum. A nearly- $60 billion/year diet industry grows over 6% annually, while the super-sized fast food industry tops $170 billion. Just today Denny’s introduced their new maple bacon sundae for their all-bacon, all-the-time festival, “Baconalia.”
The diet industry is vying for consumers’ dollars for products like nutrasweet, with the tacit backing from the Executive branch, while Congress subsidizes waning market demand for products whose special interest groups are stronger than their market appeal.
Subsidies can only go so far. Sure, the market wants 100-calorie packs. But when it comes down to it, we want to feel ourselves and our families, feel nourished, and like what we eat.
Choosing to pay more for smaller portions with a premium on someone else controlling portion size is a fine choice, but it might be the ultimate first-world choice.
Americans are the fattest population in the world. It’s fantastic that we are free to put whatever we want into our bodies. But the “Subsidize Me” culture and the bloated bail-outs that comes along with it are bad for real, sustainable growth.
No one wants to see smaller portion sizes, but perhaps the rise of “diet” and “green” special interests signal that it’s time to get back to basics so we can apply the same ravenously-ambitious attitude to the next hundred years that served so well this past American century.
Chiseled food packages might be the first step towards more reasonable growth in America.
