They have been hiding it by putting less in the bag too. Have you bought a bag of chips recently? More than half the bag is air.
Well, in any bag of chips about 95% of the bag is air. But you make a fair point that package sizes have been smaller to keep prices down...
I had fun showing my granddaughters how to grow potatoes. Took a little over two months for a 1 foot by 4 foot patch to grow a huge bag of potatoes which we dug up a couple weeks ago. We had french fries and chips cooking for over a week. Yum. Cost nothing other than the olive oil to cook them, and salt. Don't buy them, grow them. We've been picking onions and tomatoes, next up are green beans.
” Have you bought a bag of chips recently? More than half the bag is air.”
Been that way for years, and is done for a reason. They are not doing it to “rip you off”.
The “Air” is actually nitrogen which keeps the chips fresh and keeps the oil from going rancid. It also helps cushion the product during shipping so you don’t end up with a bag of crumbs.
If they didn’t package it that way shelf life would be very short, spoilage loss would go up (Thus so would the retail price) and the chips would be of lower quality when you get them.
Gatorade just did it within the last couple of weeks or so, reduced the size of the standard 32oz container to 28 and kept the price the same...