I worked at McDonald’s a decade prior to that, and they were 10:1 then, too. I think it’s possible and maybe likely some other chains might have switched from being 8:1 to 10:1 since the market leaders already had that size. There are much better examples though than some isolated regional player’s beef patty sizes.

We used to buy half gallons and gallons of ice cream. Brands started selling 60 or 62 ounces instead of 64. Over the years, it’s gotten to where some brands sell 48 ounces - three pints - instead of 64.

Breakfast cereals have had similar shrinking sizes.

Breakfast cereal boxes have gotten so small, it's ridiculous. They might as well label the package "Fun Size" since it's clearly not "Full Size".

Shrinkflation is to me the best example of why pure short-term-ism is a cancer. The first jackass to do it, say by taking a soup can of 16 ounces and adjusting it to 15.75oz, it boosted the profits that quarter. Mathematically, we could keep asymptotically shaving the size by 1.6% every couple years forever, but IRL that won't work because the amounts needed to be shaved would get so small as to not have the cost savings effect (or even be possible to precisely measure). So in reality the amounts need to be more like an actual quarter or half ounce at a time. So at some point the soup can, the candy bar, etc. would become so small that with one more shrink, people will recognize that it can't even feed one person, and at that point, all the "value" that was extracted by the previous CEOs to goose their stock price short term will be exhausted, and they'll have to move on to watering it down or whatever. But our packages will stay that idiotic minimum size forever.

Don't you remember how they recovered from this after 2008? That's when they started selling "family size" options that are bigger, but with a not-so-obvious price increase where you can't really tell if it's more or less expensive per oz.

Price-conscious shoppers still buy the smaller thing if it's cheaper per oz (and only if the stores show the price per oz on the shelf), but most people just get the bigger size because that's how much they want to consume, and they can't really tell that the 15% increase in size does not equate to 19% increase in cost.

Many stores would stock the family size separate from the regular size so the shoppers couldnt easily compare price per oz.

Eventually the family size just becomes the regular size, but now at the higher price. Then the shrinking happens again.

And the same happens with subpar ingredients - when people notice they then bring back an "original formula" edition that is of course higher priced.

> (and only if the stores show the price per oz on the shelf)

Legal requirement that they do in the UK (though in metric units), so it's £/L and £/Kg (or for smaller items per 100g and then some nuance on unit prices for things not sold by weight/volume).

It does make their shenanigans with multipacks and such way more obvious by design.

> The PMO also requires traders, where applicable, to display the ‘unit price’ – which is the price which would be charged for the relevant unit of the goods, depending upon how the goods are sold. Unit pricing can be a useful tool for consumers. It allows consumers to compare the price and value of similar products. This can be helpful when making a decision between similar products that are sold in different sizes or quantities.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/price-marking-ord...

It’s this way in the EU as well and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is EU regulation from pre-brexit that hasn't been repelled by uk govs post-brexit.

Many have noticed that the super large sizes at Costco, etc. often are more expensive per item or oz. than the sale price of a regular size at a Shoprite or whatever.

Interesting comment. I d noticed the family sizes that I used to see in the cereal isle are not as common. I wonder if they are preparing for a re-introduction.

This is very old, though. The Roman era experienced monetary inflation through "coin clipping", which was literally shaving bits of silver off coins and remelting it together. This is why modern era coins often have milled tamper-evident edges, even if the metal is no longer worth the face value.

Didn’t they also have filler then remove it to be 100% beef at some point?

100% beef is the topic of an ongoing lawsuit[0].

0 https://lawsips.com/mcdonalds-100-beef-lawsuit/

I was surprised to see a real reference because I thought the 100% beef thing was a 100% myth.

But that article confirms in several places that independent testing finds no fillers at all, and what is left is just "Plaintiffs allege that undisclosed processing steps or agents applied during production or cooking could alter the accuracy of the “100%” claim." It's not a very convincing argument and it would be quite hard for McDonalds to cover up a secret process to add another ingredient.

> Additionally, the visual gap between advertised burgers and actual burgers raises separate false advertising issues

Meanwhile, the very clear and obvious false advertising they actually perform is getting hardly any attention. Here's to hoping they won't be able to continue advertising products that are different from what they sell.

100% beef is a trademark.

"100% beef" is a factual claim, and not subject to Trademarks; McDonalds Trademarked "100% PURE ALL-AMERICAN BEEF" in 1982.

https://www.trademarkia.com/100-pure-all-american-beef-73352...

Even that doesn't mean that the patty is JUST beef. Thanks to legalese, the only thing a claim like that would guarantee is that the beef portion of the hamburger patty is "100% PURE ALL-AMERICAN BEEF".

It could be 99% filler and not be a lie.

>"It could be 99% filler and not be a lie."

There is no evidence that McDonalds has included any filler in their burgers at all (at least in recent history). See the link in the cousin-comment for more information on what has been claimed and what has been proven (so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247943

There is no evidence that McDonalds "beef" is actually any good. Nothing they sell should be classified as food.

> the beef portion of the hamburger patty is "100% PURE ALL-AMERICAN BEEF"

But the claim isn't about "the beef portion". If what you say is true it would give a competitor the chance to say "McD's burgers are 100% unhealthy fat" because the unhealthy fat portion is 100% unhealthy fat.

> It could be 99% filler and not be a lie.

I doubt it. Not sure about the US but in Europe there are laws that tell you how much or how little of something you can have before you advertise that thing. For example you can't say "now with less sugar" if you reduced the quantity of sugar by 0.001g. And you can't call it "olive oil" if it has 2% olive oil.

> And you can't call it "olive oil" if it has 2% olive oil.

Which is still way too lax. It should only be called olive oil when it's 100% olive oil. You can pick some other name like "olive oil based" or "unholy mixture of the cheapest gutter oils we could find" which clearly indicates that what you are selling is in fact a combination of oils.

I forgot to mention, my bad, I used some random numbers. The EU "nutrition claims" numbers are here [1]. If you want to claim "less salt" then it must contain at least 25% less. For most other ingredients it's 30%, so you can't advertise "less X" forever because you reduce 1 nanogram at at time.

For olive oil you can find the details here [2]. As above, there's no such thing as "the olive oil part was olive oil". The label is for the product.

The US probably has something similar, even if watered down.

[1] https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/labelling-and-nutritio...

[2] https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/crops/olive-oil_en

Only after attempts to call one of their suppliers or processors "100% Beef" failed.

I recall a similar claim regarding pop music compilation CDs advertised as being performed by "The Original Cast", which was really a group by that name playing covers of popular songs.

Or another being "Made in USA", where Usa was a city in Korea.

I feel like there is a probably apocryphal story of a town in Japan being called Scotland so they can sell whisky as Scotch.

Which as a highlander I don’t see the need for - Japanese whiskey is quite able to stand in its own and hold its own.

Except apparently:

  any bottle labeled or marketed as "Scotch" in Japan must strictly comply with the UK's Scotch Whisky Regulations. Because Scotch Whisky (スコッチ・ウィスキー) is legally recognized and registered in Japan as the legal equivalent of a protected denomination of origin.

"Genuine diamonds" sold fake diamonds after trademarking the name, I thibk. However a decade later I read about them losibg a lawsuit.

This tricks don't work any more.

the tricks never worked legally speaking. misleading labels stay misleading even if you have a trademark on that name and use it for years.

the problem is cases like this rarely go to court, and plaintiffs might run into a judge who literally doesnt believe consumer fraud is a thing if theres at least one possible non fraud interpretation no matter how unlikely it is.

"Original Cast" is a record label that sells records of obscure musical theater shows.

Usa is a city in Japan, and according to the internet the "Made in USA" thing is a joke or myth.

As far as I can tell both of your speculative claims don't reflect any real thing that happened.

I don't suggest they are real. Only that they are similarly as dubious as the 100% beef claim.

Where did OP specifically say maccas?

OP didn't say any chain, so his argument is technically not falsifiable, but that also makes it incredibly dubious.

How did they make a quarter pounder out of 1/10s?

1/4 is a separate item.