TIME – How’s this for a sales pitch: With Budweiser’s new can design, you’ll get less beer, and you’ll get to pay more per ounce. You’ll also get to support the aluminum industry.
Anheuser-Busch is messing with the classic 12-ounce can. Starting in May, Bud will be available in a new “bowtie”-shaped can, which is angled inward in the center, mimicking the vertical Budweiser logo created in 2011. Each of the new cans contains 137 calories of beer, 8.5 fewer calories than the usual can of Bud. And how is Anheuser-Busch lowering the per-beer calorie count? Easy! It is putting less beer inside each can. Bowtie cans, which will be sold in addition to regular cans rather than replacing them, will hold 11.3 ounces of beer.
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The “shrink ray,” as the advocacy site Consumerist.com calls it, has been applied to all sorts of products over the years. Cereal boxes, bags of chips, orange juice containers, plastic soda bottles, ice cream cartons—these and countless other goods have been carefully redesigned so that manufacturers can create the illusion consumers are getting the same amount of product, even as the packages hold less than the previous models. It’s a way for manufacturers to boost revenues without appearing — to the average consumer, at least — to raise prices.
Read more at Time.
