Less and less, more and more
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 2
CONSUMER COMPLAINT DEP'T.
FOOD FRIDAY: They Shrank the Peas
I REALIZED AT some point that we were out of frozen peas. I don't pay much attention to the frozen peas because they're an emergency measure: if I'm out of leftover vegetables for the kids' lunch Thermoses, I can put some peas in the microwave, or when I'm making fried rice or clobbed-together rice, I can throw some peas in the wok. Otherwise I can go months without thinking about them, and it doesn't matter, because they're in the freezer.
Rummaging around the freezer for something else, though, I became aware that there were no peas in there. I faintly remembered using up the last package, and I had no matching memory of buying a new one.
I buy the frozen peas, like most of the regular groceries, from a delivery company. The delivery company's website has an option to browse the list of everything you've bought before, which appears to be sorted according to how many times you've bought it. Each week, I scroll down that list using more or less the same mental apparatus I would use if I were pushing a shopping cart with wheels through a circuit of a physical supermarket: as the familiar items go by, I remember which staples we need or decide which particular things I want to cook, and I grab them.
This approach mostly works, but when an item is out of stock, the website drops it down from its normal spot to a faded-out section at the bottom. If a real-world supermarket is accidentally out of, say, the house-brand organic 2 percent milk, then you wheel your cart down the milk section of the dairy aisle, see the empty rack, and look around for a different brand or a different percentage. On the shopping site, though, the milk section effectively vanishes.
For things like milk or toilet paper, that's usually not so bad. Before I start clicking things into the virtual shopping cart, I've already checked to see how many cartons of milk we need or whether we're into the last package of toilet paper, so if there's some supply-chain glitch and the delivery company is out of the usual brand or size, and those items are missing, it leaves me with the nagging sense that there's something more I need to do.
The frozen peas had no such mnemonic support. Once they were gone from the screen, it was as if frozen peas had never existed; seasons went by without my catching on. When I finally did, I did a ctrl-F search for "peas" on the list, and found them down in the faded section, labeled "Sold out." Clearly, they were something more than sold out, since they'd been gone indefinitely. A little button offered me the chance to pull up alternatives.
The old peas had been the Nature's Promise supermarket brand. The alternatives on offer were the delivery company's own brand and two others. All of them were 10 oz. bags.
Since when were frozen peas 10 ounces? A bag of frozen peas is a pound of peas. I checked the print on the faded-out image of the old product: 16 oz.
And the new peas were more expensive! The house-brand ones cost 11 percent more than the old peas had, for 37.5 percent fewer peas.
(A quick Google search for Nature's Promise peas, in stores they're still available, revealed that they're now in a 12 oz. bag.)
Here was the notorious shrinkflation, combined with regular inflation. But the point of shrinkflation is that it's supposed to sneak up on the consumer—you see something on the shelf that looks like the usual product, and you grab it, and you don't necessarily catch on that the box is smaller or lighter, or that the contents themselves may have dwindled in size. You can't do that switcheroo with virtual inventory. Instead of tricking me into buying the lesser size of peas, the site simply tricked me into not buying peas at all.
The same thing happened with the orange juice earlier this year. The 52-fluid-ounce bottle of Tropicana (which surely, at some point, was a 64-fluid-ounce bottle) disappeared, and after a few weeks without orange juice, I used the search box to find the new 46-fluid-ounce bottle. The per-bottle price went down, in that case, but the price per fluid ounce went up about a penny. I didn't really mind, though. The new one fit better in the fridge.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, January 2, 2025
★★★ Clouds moved fast from west to east as people waited in or around their cars for the street sweeper. The hat had not made it back to the parka pocket in the December shuffle from coat to coat to coat, and the wind that sounded exciting in the weather forecast was just ordinarily harsh in the late morning. A mat of shredded fireworks wrappers lay in the middle of the street. By afternoon, the hat had turned up again, and the extra protection made it tolerable to wait around outside indefinitely, under thickening clouds, as long as the body didn't stand too still in any one place.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from Institution Recipes For Use In Schools, Colleges, Hospitals And Other Institutions, by Emma Smedley, Director of Public School Luncheons, Philadelphia, Pa.; Formerly Instructor in Domestic Science, Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, Pa.; Instructor in Dietetics, The Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses, Baltimore, Md, published in 1919 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Sardine Sandwiches I
(50 Sandwiches)
3 3/4 pounds sardines
6 ounces butter
2/3 cup lemon juice
100 slices bread
Cut sardines in half, sprinkle with lemon juice and place between slices of buttered bread.
Calories in recipe 2,584 protein, 12,989 total
Calories in one sandwich: 52 protein, 260 total
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
