One way around the Grocery Shrink Ray is to leave packages the same physical size, but put less product in them. Two readers recently noticed that they weren’t getting as much value for their money as they thought when shopping at Walmart.

Topher noticed these bags of tortilla chips that look big, but are half filled. This is pretty normal, since the bags are filled by volume and not weight: but it’s rather wasteful.

Meanwhile, over in the vegetable aisle, Don writes:

I recently bought some canned green beans from Walmart. The canned green beans were the Great Value brand. I measured the weight of green beans and the weight of water in the can. The can was a 14.5 ounce can. The water weighed just over 11 ounces and the green beans weighted 3 ounces.

My question is this – shouldn’t the can be labled as “water with green beans” since there is more water in the can than green beans? I guess I also want to know if this is normal for other brands.

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