"groceries" news and stories

Yes, you've gotten bigger since your first carton of Häagen-Dazs but the carton's actually getting smaller. Or at least its bottom is caving in and air is being whipped in, dropping the contents by 2 oz. (a 12.5% reduction from 16 oz. to 14 oz.) with no change in price.

In the latest issue of Consumer Reports, senior editor Tod Marks found a list of products that are shrinking to raise company revenues in tough times, including Hebrew National hot dogs, Kirkland Signature (Costco) paper towels, Tropicana orange juice and Kraft American cheese packs, which now contain two fewer slices. And are none cheaper. It all started with a roll of toilet paper that claimed to be the "thickest ever," when in fact it was short 52 sheets.

"They've got a point," writes Marks. "Higher commodity and fuel costs are expected to spike in food prices by as much as 3 percent in 2011. But if manufacturers are skimping when costs go up, why aren't they more generous when costs hold steady or fall?" Companies claim they wanted to prevent sticker shock, so they decided to keep prices the same and instead charge us more for less product and hope we wouldn't notice.

If you're trying to eat healthy, put down that debit card.

New research shows that customers are less likely to buy unhealthy foods if they use cash than if they pay with credit or debit cards for groceries, according to a report from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Over the course of six months, researchers from Cornell University and the State University of New York in Binghamton and Buffalo followed 1,000 households, analyzing their shopping behavior. Their study found that when the shoppers paid with credit or debit cards instead of cash, they put more junk food in their shopping carts, the study showed.

Why does health go out the window when paying with plastic?

Rachel, of the wonderful Coconut & Lime blog, has a new entry on cost-saving tips on her Food Maven blog, which is dedicated entirely to food tips. We've written about how to save on the food bill before here at Slashfood, but there are a few entries on Rachel's list we hadnt thought of. Here are two of my favorite tips:

I pay attention to cycles in sales, baking stuff goes on sale in December, yogurt about once a month, roasting chickens in the winter etc and stock up the best I can.

I plan meals around what is on sale rather than rushing out and buying (full price) ingredients for a specific dish.

Check out the blog for the full list of ten tips.

What are your favorite grocery cost-saving tips?

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I'm not exactly sure how much time or energy this web technology saves, but apparently, Grocist allows you to scan products to create an electronic grocery list.

You keep a barcode scanner in your kitchen and when you run out of a product, you scan the barcode from the package before you throw it away. The web application searches a UPC database to determine the product and keeps a running grocery list for you.

While the idea of this sounds pretty cool, I can't see how scanning a barcode is any faster or easier than jotting something down on a list that's taped to your refrigerator door. I also can't really see people running out to buy a barcode scanner. Additionally, using Grocist assumes that a lot of your groceries are packaged goods that would be found in the UPC database. I don't know this for sure, but the last time I went to the grocery store, there weren't any barcodes on garlic and lettuce.

However, if the Grocist were to actually send that information at the end of every week via email to the grocery store who could deliver the groceries to my front door, then I'd pay attention!

[via: Lifehacker]

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Do you take reusable shopping bags with you when you do your grocery shopping? The first step is to start keeping the bags in the trunk of your car. Eventually, even if you forget that they're there for the first few times, you'll gradually get into the habit of bringing them into the store with you. Some grocers will give their shoppers a discount for bringing in their own bags, but even if they don't, you'll probably get the warm and fuzzy feeling of self-satisfaction from helping the environment.

Once you're in the habit of bringing in canvas bags, it shouldn't be much of a stretch to add a cooler bag to your collection, which will keep frozen foods, fresh produce and refrigerated products protected from the heat of the car - an especially useful feature for a hot summer day or any time that you have a long commute. This particular insulated bag is helpfully labeled, and has sturdy wooden handles that make it easy to carry.

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