As grocery prices rise, customers are starting to feel the pinch. Shoppers are feeling more pressure than ever to make sure that every single penny counts, and as a result, are less inclined to let something like “shrinkflation” slide.
What’s Shrinkflation?
Shrinkflation describes the business practice where items decrease in size and quantity while the price stays the same. But according to a TikToker, straight-up dishonesty about how much product is actually present takes things one step further, especially when it spreads to cat food.
“Hey, Purina. Did you really think we weren’t going to notice that you started putting less food in and just filling the space in with some liquid?” one TikToker challenged in a video that’s amassed 455,500 views as of Friday. “The cans still says it has five and a half ounces in it. However, it doesn’t have five and a half ounces of food.”
To prove her point, creator and animal rescue worker @allsoulsconnected spooned the Purina cat food onto a scale to measure how its actual weight differs from what is advertised.
“Four and a half ounces of food is what’s in that can,” she announced. “Not five and a half. It’s an entire ounce [missing]. The rest is liquid.”
Speaking directly to Nestle, the makers of Purina, she continued, “Stop ripping people off. I run a rescue and [trap neuter return] program. We feed a lot of cats, stray cats, abandoned cats, rescued cats. Every single penny counts, don’t you think it’s time you take a step back and maybe get a conscience and see what you’re really doing and who you’re hurting? People are struggling to pay their bills [..] stop doing this.”
@allsoulsconnected I’ve been noticing for a bit that the Friskies pate cans were not full and had extra liquid in them and decided to see if they were lying about how much food was in the cans… #purina #friskies #corporategreed #pricegauging #Greedflation #StopCorporateGreed #puregreed #ripoff #catfood #petfood ♬ original sound – All Souls Connected
The Daily Dot reached out to Purina for comment and the creator via email.
Shrinkflation in the wild
This isn’t the first time a TikToker has gone viral for exposing shrinkflation. A Costco customer found that a 2-pound bag of Kettle crinkle cut chips actually measured up at 1 pound, 2 ounces, while a Walmart customer was furious to discover that a chicken labeled 4.92 pounds weighed just 2.2 pounds.
There are numerous examples of this happening across the country at different stores, which suggests that customers are no longer willing to take false advertising lying down.
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