Over the past few years, rising food costs have led shoppers to inspect their grocery purchases more closely than ever before. Where customers might have trusted the weight provided on a food packaging label before, now they are weighing items once they get home from the grocery store to see if they are truly getting what they paid for.
Grocery shoppers have already shown some discrepancies between the labels on chicken breasts from their store’s deli aisle and lower-than-labeled weights of chips in bags. Now, one Walmart shopper says her 12-ounce package of bacon came in at just over half of the advertised weight on her kitchen scale.
In a video posted to TikTok, Heather Lynne Foster (@heatherlynnefoster) shows herself weighing out the unopened package of bacon, which came in at around seven ounces both in and out of the wrapping.
“Alright, so get a load of this,” she says in the video. “This is an unopened package of bacon, right. It says that it’s 12 ounces. I picked it up and I was like, hmm, okay, I know these usually come in a pound but I got the 12 ounce instead. It was like $4. I was just curious, because I know everybody keeps saying that we’re not getting screwed, but look at that. That’s with the package.”
Foster then weighs the bacon removed from the package. “Hold on. This is the bacon that just came out. There’s six slices in this thing,” she says. “Let’s see how much it weighs. It says that it’s 12 ounces, but we saw … it is seven ounces. Mmhmm. So ‘shrinkflation isn’t real,’ and ‘they’re not scamming us.'”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Foster via Instagram direct message and Walmart via contact form regarding the video.
Some viewers shared that they had also purchased a 12-ounce package of bacon from Walmart’s Great Value brand, only to find that the weight was closer to seven ounces. Others shared that they had noticed a consistent shortage of what they thought they were purchasing, based on the printed weight.
“Omg!! I bought that same bacon and just weighed it and it was 7 ounces!” one commenter wrote.
“Just weighed mine (same brand) and its 7oz,” another said.
“As someone who has been weighing/calorie counting food, this is a problem across the board,” a further user said. “A lot of products are underweight. It’s maddening.”
@heatherlynnefoster These corporations are charging double for groceries and not even giving us what we are paying for #shrinkflation #groceries #inflation #corporategreed #usa #groceryshopping #middleclass #corporations #walmart #fyp #scam ♬ original sound – Heather Lynne Foster
Several viewers shared that they would be bringing a scale with them to measure the weight of items before purchasing, while one viewer recommended weighing items using produce scales.
“20 yr old me won’t believe the reason I keep a scale in my car is for groceries now,” one commenter wrote.
“I am going to start bring a scale shopping,” another said.
“Ima be taking my scale to the store with me from now on,” a third commented.
