The movement against plastic shopping bags gained a lot of momentum today after the Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 to phase out the use of plastic shopping bags at supermarkets. More »
Safeway's Lucerne house brand ice creams have been repackaged, and now come in a round container branded the "Easy-Scoop Package." That's a nice redesign, and round containers are easier to scoop from. Only, as reader Ryan points out, maybe the ice cream is easier to scoop now because there's now a half-quart less of it. More »
It's been a while since we heard any updates on that class-action lawsuit against General Mills over its claims that Fruit Roll-Ups are "made with real fruit." Well, yesterday the judge in the case gave it the go-ahead to proceed. More »
These Roman frozen pizzas normally cost all of $1.68. Who can afford that in this economy? That's why Wisconsin chain Pick 'n Save has them marked down to only $1.66 each. If you buy six, as recommended, you save twelve cents. And have a freezer full of cheap frozen pizza. Is that really where you wanted your life to end up? More »
Safeway is joining the ranks of other food providers, announcing that it plans to stop using any pork suppliers that put pregnant sows in cages as part of the production process. Animal rights groups call caging or crating pigs inhumane. More »
Northeastern grocery chain Wegmans inspires the same kind of fanatical devotion in consumers as iPhone releases or "Twilight" movie premieres. So when a Wegmans store opened in Northboro, Mass., people camped out overnight awaiting their opportunity to storm the bulk candy aisle and buy $6 prepared meals, or something. Students in a local high school's advanced drama class tapped into the zeitgeist, and have created an entire musical about the chain. It may be the world's longest grocery store commercial. More »
For too long, chicken thighs were the ignored child of the chicken meat family, relegated to bulk packs at ridiculously low prices. For people that knew what to do with the less-desired but more flavorful dark meat, it meant tasty meals that didn't break the bank. But the secret is now out, and consumers are starting to pay top dollar for the one-time bargain poultry parts. More »
Guess what? America isn't the only country where store employees get a kick out of secretly spying on customers. According to a new report out of Germany, managers of several supermarkets of the Aldi discount chain have been filming female shoppers as they bend over refrigerators, reach for stuff on shelves and walk around stores. More »
It's been nearly two years since the Corn Refiners Association began running ads referring to High Fructose Corn Syrup as "corn sugar," in spite of the fact that the Food & Drug Administration hadn't yet approved this name change for food labels. The FDA still hasn't gotten around to making a decision on the matter, and a number of consumer groups are tired of waiting for a decision. More »
You might have a good set of tactics while shopping at your local supermarket. But are you savvy to the subtle ways food stores (and other retailers) get you to buy more? There might be a few tricks you've fallen prey to in the past. More »
Whole Foods, that bastion of all things labeled "organic," has taken another step deeper into the environmentally-friendly pool by announcing they will stop selling fish or other seafood caught in depleted waters or through ecologically damaging methods. More »
With several supermarket chains — including Kroger and Safeway — opting to stop selling ground beef that contains "lean, finely textured beef," the ammonia-treated filler affectionately known as "pink slime," the company that pumps out the stuff has had to suspend production at three of its four slime-making facilities. More »
Raise some lox and your knifeful of cream cheese to pay homage: Murray Lender, the man who was widely credited with bringing the family business, Lender's Bagels, from a small bakery to grocery stores nationwide, has passed away at 81. More »
Somewhere in New York City, there is a rebellious grocery store that doesn't follow the rules. Except the rules this store ignores don't make it hip and interesting. They might make people sick. Every time Angela goes to the store, she notices a shelf of baked goods—cheesecakes and pies—that are supposed to be refrigerated, but aren't. Store employees don't seem to care, and the city health department has more important things to worry about. It's only Angela left, standing up for perishable food and for justice, and she doesn't know what to do next. More »
It's been a bad year for "lean finely textured beef," better known by the less-tasty moniker "pink slime." The ammonia-treated beef trimmings that have been used as ground beef filler for decades is quickly becoming a pariah at U.S. grocery stores like Safeway, which has announced it will no longer sell the stuff. More »
While you shouldn't even bring bagels up with a New Yorker if you're not prepared for a fight, the brave, expert testers over at our smarter siblings Consumer Reports took on a bready battle of epic proportions, as they sought the best bagel you can find in stores nationwide. More »
Remember when fungicides from Brazil and other orange-producing countries was going around tainting loads of juice and everyone was freaking out like, "Argh, now where will I get my Vitamin C from?!?!?" ? Don't worry, guys. The government says there won't be a shortage of the beloved citrus. So calm down. More »
Usually when there's a spike in thefts of common household products, there's some other nefarious use the thieves have in mind than say, getting your whites really bright and keeping your darks from fading. But in the case of a recent crime wave involving Tide detergent, it seems the soap is being stolen just because it's such a well-known brand. More »
For those of you who ever wondered how much fat was going into your body after downing a few burgers at the cookout, or how many calories are in that gigantor T-bone steak, you'll be glad to know nutritional labels will now be on almost all packaged meat products. More »
We've all the seen the devastation an extreme couponer can wreak on a display of deodeoants, if not firsthand, then on the TLC show aptly named Extreme Couponing. Sure, it's awesome for the couponer, but what about the average customer who just wants to buy one shampoo, not 23, and there are none to be found? Stores have been adjusting their policies in certain regions as a result. More »
Drive-through liquor stores have been around in various parts of the country for some time, but it's not every day that you pull into a gas station to actually fill up some empty bottles with beer. But that may change as Sunoco looks to roll out its Craft Beer Exchange stations. More »
The phrase, "But wait, there's more!" is never good when it's regarding another level of explanations that takes a deal down from something seemingly awesome, to something that is fine, but not as awesome as what you initially thought you were getting. Confused? So was Jed when he read a recent Peapod.com email. More »
Sometimes you just need someone to tell you exactly how many cookies is considered okay to eat at a time, but don't ask Trader Joe's the right serving amount of their Highbrow Chocolate Chip Cookies. They're ready with not one, but two answers on that front. More »
A 22-year-old Kentucky man has been charged with burglary after breaking into an IGA overnight and making a huge mess. According to court records, the man smashed a glass door to enter the store, discharged fire extinguishers, smeared his nude body and the manager's office with peanut butter and chocolate, and used liquid cold remedies to scrawl the word "Sorry" on the floor. More »
We're always reminding people how much more cost-effective it is to brew your own coffee at home instead of buying it at a coffee shop. But according to a new report, coffee drinkers who are hopping on the K-cup bandwagon are paying a premium for the convenience of only having to brew up a single serving. More »
There's some new buzz about honeybees, and while not all of it is super positive — namely, that we still can't figure out why so many of them are dying — there are some bright spots in the latest action from the hive. More »
It's American Heart Month (some sort of Valentine's-related synergy, we suppose) so the Centers for Disease Control has issued its latest report on how much sodium — a big contributor to high blood pressure — we're eating and where we're getting it from. More »
In case you aren't sure whether spinach is good for you, or maybe those pork rinds are trying to convince you they're healthy, Walmart is spelling it out plainly with a new logo. They're introducing a "Great For You" icon, which will be displayed on some food items in its aisles, in an attempt to convince shoppers they want you to eat healthy and save money while you're at it. More »
Used to be, back in the days of yore, shoppers looking for a deal in the grocery store could go for a generic store brand item instead of the more expensive name brands. But lately the gap between those two options has been narrowing, to the point where store brands sometimes even cost more than their previously pricier counterparts. More »
Arguing that sugar is as additive as tobacco or alcohol, scientists at the University of California San Francisco say that the sweet stuff should be regulated in much the same way as those products. That means taxes to discourage consumption and age-dependent restrictions on how much can be sold to a consumer. More »
Snacking on steak sandwiches and biting into burgers is going to hit you where it hurts, in your already moaning and groaning wallet. Ground beef prices are already at a record high and are going to keep soaring, and the cost of steak is on the uptick too. Time to go vegetarian! More »
While the corn industry waits on the FDA to decide whether or not it can have high fructose corn sugar (HFCS) relabeled with the marketing-friendly "corn sugar" label, it continues to push home its assertion that the human body reacts the same, whether the sweetener is HFCS or table sugar. But a new study claims that just isn't the case. More »
East Coasters may have already seen their favorite organic milk brands disappearing from shelves, and now the shortage seems to be spreading to the West, as some shoppers in Colorado could see a price hike of around $1. But not everyone is ready to panic, including retailers that are closely monitoring the situation. More »
A trip to the grocery store or to the gas station could start costing more than it used to, as inflation is expected to rise. So who should we blame for higher priced food and fuel? Europe! Experts say it's their fault for having the nerve to be suffering from a debt crisis. More »
As big box stores like Target and Walmart have expanded to include groceries, so have more traditional grocery store chains begun to offer more than foodstuffs for your pantry. But as tempting as it might be to turn your trip to the supermarket into a one-stop shopping trip, there are some things you might be better off buying elsewhere. More »
With every new year comes a new set of laws, some of which are destined to, in the words of the great Arsenio Hall, make you go "hmmm..." One of the latest is a new regulation in Illinois that requires you to show your ID and sign a log if you purchase drain cleaner or other similarly caustic substances. More »
Usually when we write about a store staffer getting followed in the wake of a robbery it's because they dared to do something about it, but a man in Massachusetts says he was given the boot from his Cumberland Farms job because his register had too much cash in it when the store was robbed. More »
For those of you who are concerned about the amount of antibiotics being given to the cows, chickens, pigs and turkeys that provide (or end up as) the food on your plate, here's some good news. The Food and Drug Administration has announced a new regulation that prohibits "extra-label" uses of a popular class of antibiotics. More »
Much like — and to some people, more important than — Verizon Wireless' quick flip-flop on its plan to introduce a $2 convenience fee, NY-based grocery chain Wegmans has heard the voices of the people and decided that most of you don't hate Alec Baldwin and want to see him in cute, low-budget ads for the supermarket his mom loves so much. More »
If you're looking to give people a reason to drop a dime (or preferably a dollar) in that tip jar, how about turning the whole process into a popularity contest that taps into your customers' inner comic book fan boy/girl? More »
While one way to be more efficient when grocery shopping is to pick up what you need every day, it's tough to find the time or patience to do that. Another way to simplify your routine is to go the opposite direction, minimizing trips to the store with careful planning. More »
Breaking news! It's not just women steering carts around — men can go to the grocery store and shop for food. And they don't want to be marketed to like they're females, which means companies are learning how to skew ads and create grocery aisles specifically devoted to men. More »
UPDATE: Just hours after a Washington Post blogger ranted against a Washington D.C. area Whole Foods with a Hanukkah display of matzoh has responded via Twitter to apologize for the incident. More »
Make someone pay more for something, and perhaps they will complain and buy less of it. Such is the reasoning behind "sin taxes" like a tax on soda, to try to curb the wave of obesity in the U.S. But should those taxes be imposed on consumers, or rather, on the manufacturers making the soda? More »
A flood of residents in California are reporting thousands of dollars stolen from their bank accounts, after credit card skimming machines were found in the self-checkout lines of 23 Lucky Supermarkets stores. More »
While federal standards set limits for the amount of arsenic and lead in tap and bottled water, but no such hard line exists for fruit juices, even though such drinks are dietary staples of children. Thus, our cousins-in-arms at Consumer Reports set to testing some juices, only to turn up results that should cause concern among parents and lawmakers. More »
As Americans get ready to gorge on Thanksgiving turkey, some bad news for the makers of meat in this country — earnings at the biggest companies are down, which could mean higher prices for consumers. More »
If you're looking for an upside to the last few years of economic doldrums, here's some news for you. The results of a new survey demonstrate that Americans have become more focused, efficient and less impulsive when it comes time to do their shopping. More »
I you're looking for ways to trim your budget, you might want to take a hard look at your grocery shopping habits. Sloppy shopping routines repeated throughout the year can make you waste a frightening amount of money. More »
If you're planning on ponying up for this year's Thanksgiving dinner, be prepared to spend some more money, as a new report finds the average cost of a turkey-fied feast has jumped more than 13% since last year. More »
Those who blindly reach into produce bins and accept whatever they grab are doomed to have their meals spoiled. To choose the right fruits and veggies, you need to know how to spot the warning signs of what makes those good gourds go bad. More »
Every time you throw out spoiled food, you're retroactively tossing out misspent money. Add waste to overspending at restaurants and poor choices at the supermarket and you could find that food is taking more of a sizable bite out of your budget. More »
Any number of stores have policies against accepting cash in denominations higher than $20 or $50 bills, but what about loose change? A woman in Portland (the one on the left side of the country) says her local grocery stores refused to let her use quarters to pay for $32 in groceries. More »
In the world of chocolate chip cookies, an eternal war rages between those who prefer their cookies light and crispy, and those who defend their right to a chewier treat. And, at least in one battle waged in the Consumer Reports tasting lab, a single crispy chocolate chip cookie won the day. More »
Consumer Reports investigators bought 190 pieces of seafood from retailers and restaurants in the tri-state New York area and sent them out for DNA analysis. The results confirmed what other recent studies have shown: More than 20 percent of the fish bought were different species, incompletely labeled or mislabeled. For example: More »
When you inspect the nutrition info on a package of food, it provides all sorts of information — grams of sugar and fat, milligrams of sodium — but consumers may not know exactly whether those numbers are high or low. That's why a U.S. Institute of Medicine — at the behest of Congress and the Centers for Disease Control — has suggested a rating system for food that is not unlike the Energy Star system used for appliances. More »
If you can't get enough of all things peanut butter, you might find your wallet in a bit of a sticky situation very soon, as a new report says the price of the ubiquitous nuts are rising. More »
What's a grocery store to do when an expensive piece of beef goes unsold by the time it's reached its "Use/Freeze By" date? Consumerist reader William believes he caught his Walmart simply slapping a new sticker with a new date on top of the old one. More »
We wrote earlier this year about the decision by Albertsons LLC, which controls about 1/3 of that grocery store brand's outlets, to shut down self-checkout machines in favor of human cashiers. Now a new report says we supermarket shoppers are just not using the self-checkout aisle as frequently as we were in recent years. More »
If you're going to shoplift two lobster tails, two bags of shrimp, and a pork loin from a grocery store, what's the least obvious way to do so? Shove them in your shorts, of course. A MIssissippi man is accused of shoplifting after allegedly doing just that. More »
It seems like celebrities of all stripes will allow their names to be attached to any number of products, from Whitesnake wine to the bottled manly essence of Bruce Willis. And just like all retail goods, the quality of celeb-branded items can vary wildly. That's why our test-lovin' cousins at Consumer Reports recently decided to try out a slate of food products with star-powered names. More »
Though many of the large fast food chains ditched Styrofoam containers many moons ago, there are still plenty of restaurants that continue to use Styrofoam for packing up to-go orders for customers. But a bill before the California State Assembly could put an end to that in the Golden State. More »
By now, everyone from South Carolina to New England is tracking the cone of possibilities of Hurricane Irene. Will she tack west or go east? Whatever path she takes, it seems pretty certain that a lot of folks are going to get drenched and some may lose power, suffer flooding or worse. A power outage can affect the safety of your food supply but there are some things you can do now to prepare for that possibility. More »
In these tough times, lots of engaged couples look for ways to trim the cost of their wedding reception. Here is one we most certainly do not recommend: shoplifting more than $1,000 in food from Wegmans. More »
Percolate on this: After months of popular brands of coffee rising at grocery stores, a downward turn in coffee futures is causing those prices to dip back down again. So now you can get a jolt in your system without having to complain that coffee is so expensive. More »
There's a new flavor of Klondike Bar on the block: mint chocolate chip. That's wonderful news for fans of mint chocolate chip ice cream, but also slightly confusing. Because there aren't actually any chocolate chips in the bars, even though they're pictured on the package and their ingredients listed on the product's ingredients list. Where did they go? More »
"Let the wiener wars begin." That's what a judge in a legal battle between the nation's two biggest hot dog brands declared earlier today, as the makers of Oscar Mayer and Ball Park franks each accused the other of misleading and deceptive advertising practices. More »
Northeastern grocery chain Price Chopper is one of the few companies around that still sells a full half-gallon of ice cream. None of this 1.75 or 1.5 quart shrink-rayed nonsense that you find at their competition, but a proper half gallon. You can't blame them for bragging about this in stores and in their advertising materials. But Scott discovered where all of this bragging falls apart: Extreme Moose Tracks, which has a slightly smaller container than other flavors. Harbinger of shrinkage to come? Not quite. When he contacted Price Chopper, they explained that there's a little less ice cream in that flavor's container because of the amount of candy included. Guess it's too extreme. More »
As an avid Consumerist reader, Drew knows to watch out when the boxes on the supermarket shelves get a makeover. Oftentimes these are tell-tale signs that the grocery shrink ray has been at it, reducing the amount of content you get and charging you more. His favorite cereal, Kashi Honey Sunshine, was a recent victim, dropping from 12 oz to 10.5 oz and getting a "New Look!" in the process. More »
In a move geared to raise its market value, Kraft Foods is splitting itself into separate businesses. Oreos, Trident and Cadbury will remain under company control as part of its global snacks operation, while the North American grocery division, including Velveeta, Macaroni & Cheese and Oscar Mayer, will be spun off to shareholders. The operations will pursue separate strategies. More »
Last October, Walmart announced a pledge to double the amount of produce it purchases from local growers by 2015, with the three-pronged goal of saving on fuel costs, reducing spoilage and catering to a growing consumer appetite for local produce. But while Walmart defines "local" as grown and sold in the same state, your grocery store might have a different definition for the term. More »
Those delicious yellow-peeled tasty fruits you slice over your cereal every morning might be in trouble: Scientists are warning of a banana-pocalypse heading to South America at some point in the near future. More »
In recent years, a growing number of cities all over the country have been moving to put an end to — or at least curb — the use of plastic shopping bags. Last night, in a unanimous vote, the Portland, OR, City Council approved legislation that bans the use of these bags at larger grocery stores and big-box retailers. More »
The staff at the Wegmans grocery store in Pittsford, NY, hit the lottery earlier this week — well, the seafood lottery at least — when they discovered an incredibly rare yellow lobster among the other clawed crustaceans in its Monday delivery. More »
Supermarkets are rolling out the apparent discounts more than ever. Ten for $10! Five for $5! And shoppers, thinking they're getting a deal, are gobbling it up. Never mind that you can get the same price if you just bought one of the items. More »
How many times have you been hungry, gone shopping and ended up with three packages of donut holes you really didn't need? A grocery store in Brooklyn, N.Y. is taking advantage of grumbly tummies with scent marketing, as way to get consumers to spend more at the store. More »
Usually we're all for those free samples being handed out at the grocery store, but after hearing about the offering of one employee, things might change. Anthony Garcia was indicted last week on federal charges for allegedly giving a female shopper a yogurt sample that contained his semen. Aaaaand cue the vomit noises. More »
What probably started as a normal day at a South Carolina grocery store ended with action and intrigue after employees noticed a man leaving the store with several packages of tenderloin stuffed down his pants. According to the police report, a manager confronted the man in the parking lot, reaching inside his waistband and pulling out a tenderloin. And then things got interesting. More »
Four months following the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan and caused a disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, the Japanese government has confirmed that a bit of cesium-contaminated beef from that region has made its way to groceries and likely to the dinner plates of consumers. More »
The owners of about 1/3 of the nation's Alberstons grocery stores are giving up on the notion of self-checkout lanes because store executives worry that shoppers aren't getting enough human interaction during their Albertsons experience. More »
As you wait for the subway to arrive, thoughts of errands drift through your head. Pick up medicine from the pharmacist, get package from the post office, and go get the groceries. In South Korea, Tesco has been experimenting with a system that lets you take care of that last one, right while you're on the subway platform. It's a wall-length billboard with photorealistic images of essential supermarket supplies. You take a picture of each item you want, grabbing its QR code, place your order, and Tesco will deliver it to your door. More »
In a kind of weird labeling paradox, this Turkey Hill Homemade Vanilla ice cream is simultaneously "New Flavor" AND "Original Recipe." Reader GR scratched his head over it and sent it in using The Consumerist Tipster App. It's new, but it's original, but it's new, but it's the original... The logic loop continues ad infinatum until all worlds collapse and the universe reaches a state of perfect entropy. I'm afraid for GR to open it; he might find Schrödinger's cat inside.
Last summer, when Dr. Pepper sold a limited-edition version of the beverage that used cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, we mentioned that some soda fans in Texas are always able to get their hands on Dr. Pepper from the old-school Dublin Dr. Pepper bottling plant that never made the change over to HFCS. But parent company Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Inc. says the Dublin folks have been selling their brew outside its designated area using the name Dublin Dr. Pepper in violation of their agreement. More »
While there are plenty of farmers' markets or bulk spice shops you can go to buy fresh goods with zero packaging, some entrepreneurs in Austin, TX, are aiming to open what they say is the first 100% packaging-free grocery store in the country. More »
Theoretically, the coupons that print out for you at the grocery checkout are carefully targeted to you based on your buying habits over time, or on the products in your cart on that particular day. Which is why one reader of Passive-Aggressive Notes was just a bit insulted when she purchased a single pint of Ben & Jerry's and some chocolate chips (for a baking project, she swears) and the machine spat out this Slim-Fast coupon. More »
In the future, there might be no checkout clerks at the supermarket. WSJ reports on how a device at Stop & Shops and Giant supermarkets in the northeast is eliminating checkout lanes and increasing store sales. It's a "ScanIt!" and it's a handheld device that shoppers use to scan their own groceries as they put them in their shopping cart. When they want to pay, they just plug it into self checkout station at the end and settle the bill. More »
Myron Reducto is at it again, turning his Grocery Shrink Ray Gun on Odwalla juice, zapping it down to 12 oz from 15. The price is the same Odwalla has lowered the suggested retail price for the bottles, but some retailers have opted to keep the price the same. Like other food packagers, Odwalla is combining the shrinkage with a packaging redesign that it hopes will get more press. In this case, they are simultaneously rolling out bottles that are made from 100% plant based HDPE plastic. More »
Not all organic eggs are created equal. While different cartons of eggs might all have the same "Organic! Yay!" label slapped on them, standards for what that means can vary from farm to farm. One might meet minimum USDA or Federal standards while another has no real outdoor access for the chickens to speak of. To help you navigate the bedeviling array of options, The Cornucopia Institute has created an Organic Egg Scorecard to rate farms on a 5-egg system. Small farms with lots of pasture for the chickens to frolic in rate highly, while eggs put out by Trader Joe's, Kirkland, and Price Chopper only get a one egg rating. More »
One of the biggest trends in food marketing are so-called "functional foods." These days it's not enough that food imparts nutrition and makes you not hungry, it has to perform jumping jacks. Yogurt for your digestive system, milk for your brain, and crisped rice cereal for your immune system. Food packagers don't outright say that they cure or prevent disease, they can get away with using words like "supports" and "promotes" to make their claims, as long as there's a little bit of believable science to back it up. But are they really about health, or hype? NYT investigates. More »
The CEO of Walmart recently announced that a majority of the products it sells are made in America. But retail industry experts say that, assuming it's even true, this fact is not a sign that the nation's largest retailer is making a greater shift toward purchasing American-made products. More »
The trained tasters over at Consumer Reports have turned their tongues to mustards — both yellow and Dijon — and found that, while Grey Poupon's snob appeal may have some justification, its low-cost rival from Trader Joe's is just as good. More »
Craving IHOP's stuffed french toast or sausages wrapped in pancakes but would prefer to have breakfast in the comfort and anonymity of your own home? Now's your chance. The restaurant's new "IHOP at Home" line will bring Griddle n' Sausage wraps, French Toast Stuffed Pastries and Omelet Crispers to 3,000 Walmarts nationwide. More »
Yesterday we wrote about the proposed guidelines put forth by a federal interagency working group regarding the marketing of food to children. The "principles" asked for food companies to market products with healthier ingredients and gave suggested limits on things like fat and sodium. The ad industry is less-than-pleased by the news. More »
Earlier today, an interagency working group consisting of folks from the Federal Trade Commission, Centers for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration, and the Dept. of Agriculture, issued a set of "proposed voluntary principles" it hopes the food industry will ultimately adopt in its marketing to the youth of America. More »
The other night, while I was going hog-wild on a pint of something containing fudge, peanut butter, sprinkles and unicorn horn, I thought to myself, "If only there could be some health benefit to eating this." Now I find out that a food scientist at the University of Missouri is tantalizingly close to squeezing all sorts of goodness into the gobs of gluttony in my ice cream. More »
Ok, so the official studies are telling us that Target is now actually beating Walmart on price, but is it for real? Rob Cockerham decided to put the superstores to the test. He shopped for the identical shopping list and compared the final tally. Who won? More »
Here's a trick question: How much sodium does Campbell's "25% less sodium" tomato soup contain compared to regular Campbell's tomato soup? Would you believe that both contain 480 mg? And that the first one costs more? Four NJ housewives couldn't, and a federal judge has ruled that their lawsuit against Campbell's over what they call misleading labels can proceed. More »
A new study claims that not only does half the meat sold in groceries harbor a nasty little bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus, but a full quarter of the beef, chicken, pork and turkey carries a drug-resistant strain of the bug. More »
The only things as great as saving money is getting stuff for free, and since that is frowned upon at most grocery stores, it's best to stick with finding deals. One way to possibly score some lower prices on foods you love: Check out the shelves at your local international grocery stores. More »
Looks like that whole "you get what you pay for" thing doesn't exactly apply to liquid dish soap. According to our siblings at Consumer Reports, there are plenty of dirt-cheap dish liquids that do the same job as the stuff with the fancy name and label. More »
Lots of people are always going on about how turkey burgers are healthier for you than beef, but that doesn't appear to be the case for the nearly 55,000 pounds of raw turkey burger that Jennie-O has had to recall over worries about possible salmonella poisoning. More »
The New York Times has an interesting look at Aldi, the German-owned discount chain that's anything but a superstore — it features a small selection of private label products aimed at the consumer who doesn't really care what supposedly "choosy Moms choose." More »
First it was Diet Coke pushing Pepsi out of the way to take over second place on the bestselling soda list, now it looks like beer behemoth Budweiser might lose its coveted number-two slot to Coors Light. More »
Fans of Chicago-based brewery Goose Island have reason for concern after today's announcement that Anheuser-Busch InBev is set to purchase the company in a deal worth $38.8 million. More »
The redesign of a familiar package is apparently a frightening and confusing time for consumers. That's why Barilla was kind enough to redesign its whole-grain pasta package in order to let us know that the package is about to be redesigned. More »
Arguably, the most important fact in this story is that there's a grocery chain called "Schnucks." It's located in the Midwest, and Brandon and his fiancee shop there, employing a complicated credit-card-tab-splitting procedure that normally causes no problems. This time, it did, resulting in a double charge. Brandon wonders whether he's justified in pursuing a chargeback, since he still doesn't have his money back. Short answer: Yes. More »
Here's a behind the scenes look at how they made the new Old Spice commercial where the guy goes from Tahiti to the Alps to his home pleasure pad. I thought they did it all with fancy computer mouse clicks, but actually it's all shot in one take with a lot of wires and props and set pieces that slide in and out. It's pretty fantastic, but I would have liked to see the interviewer ask the talent, Isiah "Mr. Old Spice" Mustafa, what thinks about the fact that he is going to go through the rest of his life with people asking if they can smell him. More »
After nearly a quarter century of being told that pork is the other white meat (because we all know that unicorn is actually the original white meat), the National Pork Board has pushed its tried-and-true slogan to the side in favor of the less-than-inspirational "Pork: Be Inspired." More »
It doesn't take magical powers to make veggies sprout from your backyard - just some effort, knowledge and responsibility. Growing your own garden can save you money, ensure the food you eat is free of pesticides and harmful chemicals and provide a satisfying hobby. More »
Uber-couponer Kathy Spencer isn't satisfied with just having a low grocery bill. She only considers it a success if she gets everything for almost free, or even make money off the transaction. She does this by looking for loopholes in the system, like "rolling." This is where say toilet paper is on sale for $1 but buying it generates a $1 store credit coupon. Use that to buy another roll, get another coupon, buy another roll and pretty soon, you've got yourself a year's supply of toilet paper and you're handing it out to strangers in the parking lot. More »
Turns out that the plastic tags and twists on loafs of bread aren't just for looking pretty, they are coded to indicate what day the bread was baked on, writes Wise Bread. The most commonly-used code for 5-day a week delivery is is blue for Monday, green for Tuesday, red for Thursday, white for Friday, and yellow for Saturday. It's a nifty "and now you know" factoid, though it probably won't save you from getting a stale loaf, because the shelf stockers for whom the code was designed are already doing that for you. More »
Keep your eyes sharp, Chicago grocery shoppers: A local blogger discovered cartloads of goods past the expiration date at a few Dominick's in her area. More »
Know what American retail needs? More receipt checks. DCist reports that a Washington, D.C. Safeway store has traded uniformed security guards posted at the door for plainclothes Walmart-style greeters who politely block shoppers from exiting until their receipts are checked. There's an almost literal escape hatch, though: for now, tipsters say that there are no receipt checkers posted at the exit to the parking garage. More »
The last few years have been tough on just about everybody and many of us have reacted by scaling back, buying generics instead of brand names, eating cheaper cuts of meat instead of the good stuff. But since so many people are demanding the less-expensive beef, the lower quality meat now costs more than the better stuff. More »
It's been a rough few months for eggs, following a massive salmonella-related recall. But there is a slight bit of decent news for the chicken ova industry: The eggs being popped into folks' frying pans today aren't as bad for your arteries as they were not so long ago. More »
In addition to the millions of slices of pizza being delivered and picked up from pizzerias around the country on Super Bowl Sunday, plenty of football-watching folks will be tossing a frozen pie in to the oven. For those still wondering which frozen pizza to purchase, the labcoat-lovin' testers at Consumer Reports recently pigged out on the stuff, with surprising results. More »
They're back! Around this time last year, we investigated the sudden disappearance of Morningstar Farms' delicious vegetarian corn dogs and hot dogs from grocery shelves. Consumers seem to care very deeply about this product. We're happy to report that the corn dogs, at least, are back on the Morningstar Farms website, and a reader has spotted them in the wild. More »
Here's something to choke on. The "blueberries" inside that muffin or cereal you love so much might not actually have ever been blueberries. Instead, they are a composite of sugars and starches that have been dyed blue. Check the label. If it says "blueberry flavored chrunchlets," for instance, those are actually sugars, soybean oil, red #40 and blue #2. Reached for comment, Kellogg's told NPR that the stuff is "labeled in compliance with applicable laws and regulations." Well that takes care of that. If it's not illegal and is profitable, do it. More »
Kraft showed off a concept device as this week's National Retail Federation Show that scans your face to determine your gender and age group and makes a corresponding menu recommendation. It's called the "Meal Planning Solution." Freaky deaky. No doubt that if this thing ever actually hits stores, it won't be long before someone makes a video demonstrating how it's racist. Just see what happened to HP's webcam, and the Kinect... More »
Walmart is now the largest grocery store chain in the country, and a new study says that the more supercenters the company opens, the heavier the people living nearby become. More »
While it is technically possible that a fish could be raised on a farm, released into the wild, and then caught, that's rather unlikely with the Atlantic salmon, which is endangered in the wild. So we can't help but think that there's something wrong with this ad from New England grocer Stop 'N' Shop.
For years, Walgreens has been the place where you could grab some milk, chips or soda while picking up a prescription but now the drugstore chain wants to be more than an afterthought in the fresh food market. More »
Do you like to eat bananas? Better get your fill in. A horrible fungus called "Tropical Race Four" is threatening to kill off the one variety that everyone eats, the Cavendish. More »
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the group behind that TV ad equating Big Macs with death, is continuing its war on the fast food industry, asking the mayor of Detroit to stop the proliferation of fast food eateries within city limits. More »
In what the USDA says is an attempt to better inform the meat-buying public about the products they buy, many popular cuts of meat and poultry will be required to carry labels with detailed nutritional information. More »
Christmas is about a week away, with New Year's following hot on its heels. And then there's Valentine's Day about seven weeks after that. But forget about all that junk because spring is apparently in the air at Kroger. More »
Don't you love it when products at the grocery store do the math for you? Take for instance this spray bottle of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. More »
I can't believe it's not butter! Well, it's not. It's flame retardant, and food researchers found it inside butter they bought from the supermarket. More »
Sidling up to a deli counter and stuffing a 12-pound turkey breast down his elastic-waisted sweatpants must have seemed like a good idea at one point. So a Brooklyn teen gave it a try. However, the nature of elastic and the laws of physics intervened, and he ditched the turkey in the street after waddling out of the store. More »
No, it's not that second Baconator I ate yesterday or the 6-pack of Schlitz I had afterward that's causing my clothes not to fit anymore. It's the credit card I used to pay for them — or at least that what the authors of a new study are theorizing. More »
Over at Reddit, things are buzzing with a story from one 23-year-old reader who went to their local ShopRite in New Jersey to pick up some beer only to be told they needed to fill out a form that includes their credit card number — even though they weren't using their credit card. More »
Grocery shopping takes a big bite out of most budgets. The average family of four spends nearly $6,000 a year at the supermarket. But you don't have to. It's easier to trim your grocery bill than to cut back on most other household expenses. Here's how: More »
Steve and his wife were checking out at the supermarket when they noticed something odd about the cashier packing his bags. She was ramming all his groceries like she was trying to repair a levy in a flood. More »
In the last few decades, Americans use credit (or debit) cards for more and more of our everyday spending. We're also, collectively, becoming more and more obese. A group of researchers wondered: is there a correlation here? They conducted four experiments looking at what types of food people purchase when using a credit card, and what they purchase when using cash. They published their findings in the Journal of Consumer Research. The result is not surprising: people are more likely to buy junk food, on impulse, when paying with plastic. More »
Now that Walmart has become the world's largest grocer, it has realized there are both economic and environmental reasons to purchase and re-sell locally grown produce. As part of its latest sustainability efforts announced earlier today, the retail behemoth detailed a plan to increase the percentage of its produce that it gets from local growers. More »
Shopper club cards might be part of an Orwellian masterplan to scrutinize your purchasing habits, but they also have another, less well-known use. Zach says that after an evening of drunken frolicking around New York, he lost his keys. A month later, this showed up in his mailbox. More »
If you're in California and need to make a little extra cash, why not buy a bag of baby carrots from the supermarket, throw some potting soil on them, and sell them at your local farmers market as fresh-from-your-farm organic treats? Okay, maybe technically that's not permitted, but who's going to stop you? An NBCLA investigation found vendors at several farmers markets were lying to customers about their produce, and sourcing it from local warehouses instead of their own farms. More »
Students at two high schools — one in Cincinnati, OH, the other in Syracuse, NY — are guinea pigs for a new program that's trying to change the way young people look at veggies, by marketing and selling carrots like they're junk food. More »
Shoppers in Brownsville, TX, should start investing in reusable shopping bags. Starting Jan. 5, most stores will be banned from using plastic bags and people will be charged an extra dollar for every transaction in which they use plastic bags. More »
Now, it could be that Giant Eagle grocery stores plastered every shelf in their stores with tags advertising their new program which provides free diabetes medications to customers. As tipster Greg writes, "While, as a diabetic, I appreciate the free meds from Giant Eagle grocery store, did they really have to advertise it next to the Breyer's ice cream? That really hurt."
Barring the complete outlawing of fizzy drinks, the Coke vs. Pepsi fight will continue to be the main event in pop pugilism. But what about the albino step-siblings of these cola titans — the lemon-lime drinks? These lesser libations — Sprite, Sierra Mist, 7Up — have seen their ad budgets butchered and their sales sink in recent years. But none of them are willing to go down for the count without at least one last left hook. More »
Name brands exert a strong power over shoppers: 17% of us think name brand foods are more nutritious, even though there's little nutritional difference between the two categories. Consumer Report performed taste tests on several food categories to determine whether name brands tasted better than store brands, and found that in some cases the store brands actually won. More »
There are certain assumptions we make in this world: The sun rises in the east; the Cubs will never win the World Series again; and Whole Foods is an expensive place to shop. But don't tell that to the grocery chain's CEO John Mackey, who says that only .1% of the products he sells are pricier than you'll find elsewhere. More »
The words "Clomiphene" and "Clomipramine" might look similar, but if you work in a pharmacy, you should know that they stand for very different things. Clomiphene is the generic version of the fertility drug Clomid. Clomipramine is a tricyclic antidepressant. A woman in Pittsburgh says that the pharmacy at a Giant Eagle grocery store gave her the antidepressant when she was prescribed the fertility drug. She had a severe allergic reaction and ended up in the emergency room. More »
The FDA says the law that requires restaurant chains with more than 20 locations to post calorie counts also applies to other types of businesses, reports the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, movie theaters, airplanes, trains, food courts in grocery stores, and convenience stores are all considered chains and will soon have to start following the law. The agency hasn't made up its mind yet whether things like salad bars in grocery stores will have to fall in line. The FDA will announce official guidelines in December. More »
It's generally understood among bagel buyers in New York that you won't be charged tax on a sliced, untoasted bagel with no butter, cream cheese or any other sort of spread. But with the state desperately trying to deal with budget shortfalls, it is now expecting bagel sellers to charge taxes on these often-untaxed items. More »
Ever wonder how Trader Joe's stores can sell Charles Shaw wines — more commonly known as Two-Buck Chuck — for such low prices? CNN.com just posted this interview with Fred Franzia, the man behind the discount drinks. More »
A New York company called Zemco Industries has recalled 380,000 pounds of deli meat that it distributed to Walmart under the Marketside label, because it might be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Although nobody has reported any illness and healthy people aren't usually in danger, listeriosis can kill old people, infants, and others with weak immune systems. More »
The GroceryIQ app for iOS and Android lets you scan product barcodes to add them to your grocery list, and even share them with roommates or family members. More »
Here's a perfect example of why you should ignore what's on the front of a product package and go straight to the nutritional info instead. Kraft's Wheat Thins now come in a "100% Whole Grain" variety, which you might think translates into more fiber for your digestive tract. It even says on the front that one serving packs 22g of whole grain versus 11g for regular Wheat Thins. It turns out, however, that both crackers provide the same amount of dietary fiber and fat—and the whole grain version also has more sodium and is made with high fructose corn syrup. More »
In a sad bit of news, Morrie Yohai, the man behind longtime snack fave Cheez Doodles — responsible for millions of orange-stained fingers each year — passed away last week at the age of 90. More »
Rejoice Michael Pollan, it's finally happening: wheat bread is almost more popular than white bread. Consumers are increasingly skipping past the Wonderbread for healthier-looking fare that either has "natural" in the name or whole grains visible through the packaging. More »
As today is the last weekday of National Ice Cream Month, it might be the right time to look at some ice cream flavors that aren't exactly mouth-watering. Luckily, the editors over at TheGloss.com have compiled a list of 10 bizarre flavors for your freezer. More »
While the debate rages about the merits of reusable grocery bags vs. plastic shopping bags, stores like Walgreens are pushing the many ways shoppers can reuse plastic bags with this handy list printed on the bag's side. More »
While fast food companies attempt to outdo themselves with bacon-wrapped, chocolate-glazed triple burgers, the folks at Kraft Foods are actually doing something that will make their Nabisco line of crackers healthier — adding more whole wheat. More »
The food business is a merciless mistress, leaving countless brands dead at her feet, some before they ever had the chance to find a foothold in the market. But as long as there are those of us who remember these deceased foodstuffs, they will always live on... even if we can't eat them. More »
You may recall late last month when wrote about a study that purported to find some nasty bacteria being harbored in the fabric of reusable, cloth shopping bags. While we just said this means y'all should wash your bags more frequently, our science-minded siblings at Consumer Reports decided to take a closer look at the study itself. More »
Sure, the exploits of the coupon ninjas are interesting, but we live, shop, and eat in the real world. Who has time to make a job—or at least a time-consuming hobby—out of couponing? Jeffrey doesn't. Yet he began a challenge to feed himself on $1 per day in April...and is still at it. Using sales, coupons, and (ugh) rebates, he's managed to survive, without a huge time investment in couponing. What are his secrets? More »
You wouldn't notice from the relatively affordable cost of Lobster in the region these days, but in many areas of the Mid-Atlantic the populations of the tasty crustaceans have sunk to alarmingly low levels. So much so that later this week, members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are meeting to discuss a proposed five-year ban on lobster harvesting in the waters between Virginia and Cape Cod. But the most important question is — what impact is this going to have on restaurants and lobster lovers? More »
Whatever problems a liberal jerk like me might have with Ronald Reagan, I will give the man this — In 1984, he had the vision to name July as National Ice Cream Month. And then, within National Ice Cream Month, there is National Ice Cream Day. This year, that falls on July 18. When Reagan made the declaration, he asked Americans to celebrate this glorious month with "appropriate ceremonies and activities," which I will take to mean, "burying my face in a bucket of butter pecan." More »
A woman in Chicago who purchased $40 in groceries at Whole Foods but was later snagged by security with a purloined bottle of kids vitamins in her bag is now persona non grata at the overpriced grocery chain. More »
Having grown up in Pennsylvania, I always assumed you could only buy beer at a bar, restaurant or beer distributor and that wine and liquor had to be purchased at "state stores." So it comes as a bit of a surprise to this kid from the Philly burbs that PA recently became the first state to begin selling wine out of large in-store "kiosks." More »
Last month, we asked readers to tell us which food brands had earned their undying loyalty. Now it's time to go the other way and take a look at those products — not just food this time — that you only buy in their most generic forms. More »
If you're a real sugar fan and you spot a really old looking can of Dr. Pepper at your grocery store in the next few weeks, you might want to stock up. To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the soda brand is going retro with its can designs — and its sweetener. More »
While calorie information is available for most of the food we eat, that data doesn't really do the eater any good if you don't know how many calories you should be consuming each day. Unfortunately, a new survey shows that an overwhelming number of Americans are either mistaken or clueless when it comes to that information. More »
It's apparently quite hot here in New York City. I wouldn't know because I refuse to leave the igloo I've created around my air-conditioner. But if I were to venture out onto the sizzling streets, the first thing I'd do is get me a huge bowl of mint chip ice cream... not a cone because in this weather that's just asking for disaster. More »
Back on Memorial Day, we dealt with the great gas vs. charcoal debate. And now that it's the July 4th weekend, you've had time to hone your grilling chops in time for some pre-fireworks feasts. But the big question is: What will you be cooking? More »
The world of shoppers is divided into two, sometimes rival, camps: those who coupon and those who don't. If you are going to coupon, you have to make sure that you do it right and respect your fellow shoppers, otherwise they will hoist you (in their minds) from the nearest shopping cart return sign. So then, NJ.com proposes 10 commandments for couponers to follow so that we can all live together in harmony, couponer and non alike. More »
Yes, it is the Cheerwine Kreme Filled Krispy Kreme doughnut. Two beloved Carolina brands together in a collision of flavor. Diabetes never tasted so good! More »
Have you ever wondered what that numbered zebra stripe on the box of every purchase really means? Yes, your fears are true. It does contain secret messages the manufacturer is trying to communicate to the bar code scanner. But we have a secret decoder ring you can use to figure them out using your brain powers. More »
It seems the Grocery Embiggen Ray, the antithesis of the Grocery Shrink Ray, has struck Safeway Select ice cream and they're offering up a whole two quarts, just like ice cream makers used to all do back in the old timey days. More »
Ian and his family love garlic, but he tells Consumerist that his favored Publix store seemed to have trouble stocking garlic that wasn't either moldy or sprouted. Neither of these are good qualities for fresh garlic, so Ian e-mailed the chain's corporate office about the situation. Eventually, he received a response with an almost Wegmans-like level of class and problem-solving. More »
Have you ever looked at a glass of wine and thought, "I really wish someone would make wine in sealed, single-serve cups"? Well, apparently your fairy bartender was listening, because a man in the UK has come up with the biggest innovation in wine since Whitesnake announced their hot-tub-ready zinfandel. More »
Stickybits is a social network that combines your phone's camera, a web connection, and UPCs to leave virtual notes and images scattered all around you like invisible sticky notes. The important question, as always, is can it be used to sell stuff? Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Campbell's, Frito-Lay, and Ben & Jerry are all planning to find out in social media campaigns this summer, reports Brandweek. More »
Grand openings are occasionally not so grand, but that's usually because of bad weather or poor turnout. It's not usually due to a drunk shedding his clothes and hurling threats at employees. That is, unless you're talking about the grand opening of the Price Chopper in Cromwell, CT, this week. More »
Last week we told you how Melissa found a giant scary mold in her Capri Sun juice pouch. After she posted pictures on her Facebook, sections of the internet went totally apesh*t. This is probably because the mold looked like a giant horse eyeball and Kraft's initially slow response only fueled the flames of hysteria. As part of getting up to speed, Kraft even put up a whole FAQ devoted specifically to this one issue. Between its lines, though, you can read their frustration with the blowup. Their answer to the last question "What kind of mold is it?" is both honest and funny: More »
Frito-Lay is warning consumers to watch out for fake free bags of Doritos coupons being distributed via email. If you are an unsuspecting victim of this subterfuge and receive the coupon in your inbox, watch out! You might get to check out and not be able to get a free bag of Doritos with a value of up to $5. Here's how you spot the real deal and the phonies, just like Holden Caulfield: More »
Although the Arby's spokeswoman who talked to the website Nation's Restaurant News wouldn't give specifics, she confirmed that in the near future you might see "packaged Arby's items" in your grocery store. Sadly, it looks like these will be food items and not giant foam hats. More »
For decades, the Thomas' English Muffins have been bragging about the tasty nooks and delicious crannies of its breakfasts breads. They're such a well-regarded company secret that only seven people at the company know the recipe. And now that one of those dudes is trying to jump ship to Hostess, it's lawsuit time. More »
In the Super Target at St. Charles, IL, there is a forgotten container of sorbet that is damaged, missing a seal, and over a year past its expiration date. Keith says it's been sitting there by itself in the freezer case for at least four months now. He and his wife say hi to it whenever they shop there. More »
If you find yourself driving down River Highway in Mooresville, NC this summer and suddenly smell a vaguely steak-like odor, don't worry, you're not having a stroke. You're passing by the billboard for Bloom, a supermarket chain that's owned by Food Lion. The billboard went up last Friday and poots out a charcoal-and-pepper fragrance from 7 to 10 a.m. and again from 4 to 7 p.m. More »
I don't know about you, but when I go to a diner and the ketchup on the table isn't my brand — it rhymes with "Heinz" — or if it's something calling itself "catsup," I know I won't be ordering anything that requires that particular condiment. The same goes true for mayonnaise: Nothing with the word "miracle" in the title is getting anywhere near my taste buds. More »
A woman in Brooklyn has accused a local grocery store of slapping a new "sell by" sticker over an expired one in order to unload some old poultry that was past its prime. More »
Parents have complained that Procter & Gamble's Pampers Dry Max diapers are irritating their babies' skin, and now the company is facing a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Ohio, as well as an investigation from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. More »
LiveCheap uncovers ways in which grocery stores make you pay more for less with subtle techniques you may not easily notice. It seems supermarkets can get mighty sketchy when it comes to arranging its meat section. More »
In the New York area, there's FreshDirect. In Chicago, there's Peapod. And across the country there are various Internet-based services, like NetGrocer or Schwan's, that will deliver certain groceries and other household items to your doorstep, depending on where you live. But does the ease with which you can order up a case of Diet Coke or a package of organic grass-fed beef without ever leaving your home mean your local grocery stores are on the way out? More »
Here's an interesting law that has some privacy implications. In Utah, bars are required to scan the IDs of anyone "who looks 35 years old or younger", and the penalty for failing to electronically verify licenses is "akin to serving alcohol to a minor," says the Salt Lake City Tribune. More »
Blaine was crestfallen that Jumbo Rice Krispies didn't live up to his dreams of a bigger, better, Krispie-er version of the regular Rice Krispies he knew and loved. He found them mealy and soggy, and complained to the company, which pretty much admitted he was right — at least that the cereal isn't a jumbo-sized version of the original. More »
Earlier this week, we wrote about how the folks at AriZona Iced Tea want everyone to know they're actually from New York. And then I was having a bite at a Connecticut Muffin in Brooklyn when I remembered that Philadelphia Cream Cheese isn't from Philadelphia. More »
While there's much heated discussion about Arizona's controversial new immigration laws, the folks at AriZona Iced Tea have somehow found themselves caught in the crossfire, with some even calling for a boycott on the beverage brand. That's why one of the founders of the company wants everyone to know that, just like inauthentic picante sauce, they're originally from New York City. More »
Whatever smoothie I'm drinking at the moment, that's my answer! Consumer Reports took a nerdier approach, as they often do, and gathered a bunch of people to taste test various store-bought smoothies, then combined those opinions with information from nutritionists. Coming out on top in the dairy category was Lifeway Lowfat Kefir Strawberry, and in the fruit category was Bolthouse Farms Berry Boost Blend. More »
To help you remember the "Dirty Dozen" foods to always buy organic, Heidi Kenney has designed this fun free cheat sheet to keep in your moneypurse (organic farming doesn't use synthetic pesticides). Flip it over and you've got the "Clean 15," which had the lowest pesticide count.. One time I was eating lots of fruits and vegetables and I ate a not-organic pear and my lip swelled up like a monkey's for a few days... maybe I should start using this list! More »
Being a native of the Philadelphia area, I was raised on the various treats made by Philly institution Tastykake. And having moved to New York over a decade ago, I know all too well the pain of not having ready access to butterscotch krimpets. Similarly, friends who've relocated to NYC from Chicagoland get misty-eyed when discussing Matt's cookies and other Windy City snacks. More »
Michael brings some news that will devastate my 3-year-old: Apparently they're doing away with the free hot air balloons they hand little guests to placate them as their parents shop. More »
Maybe Calgary's residents didn't like being eclipsed by the Olympics, or maybe there's just an awfully high number of bored crooks living there. Either way, the city has now reported 11 cases of food tampering, mostly involving shards of metal inserted into food items, in grocery stores across the city since January. More »
If you're worried that grocery store loyalty and discount cards let retailers amass a detailed profile of you and use your buying habits for marketing purposes....don't worry. Safeway, at least, doesn't actually seem to be paying attention. That's the conclusion you can draw from the coupon that Steve says printed out during his shopping trip for his Passover seder. More »
It's a common, legal practice to protect seafood with a layer of ice before packaging it up for retail sale. It's also apparently a common practice to add that ice into the total weight of the seafood, and in some cases to add more ice than necessary just to bump up the total weight, which isn't legal and which defrauds the consumer. The National Conference on Weights and Measures recently investigated seafood packaging in 17 states and pulled more than 21,000 packages of seafood from store shelves, noting that in one particularly bad case ice made up 40% of the total listed weight. More »
While many bars and restaurants continue to offer cheap chicken wings as an enticement to get diners and drinkers in the door, the demand for the little bits of bird has increased so much in the last decade that wholesale costs for wings have more than doubled. More »
In one of the odder coincidences in food-related lawsuit history, two separate Chicago-area women each filed suits against two separate grocery stores this week... for slipping and falling on runaway grapes. More »
The people on that People of Walmart website may wear some ugly t-shirts, but at least they're honest when it comes to dealing with strangers. According to a new study that looked at how markets, religion, and the size of a community impact concepts of fairness and punishment, Walmart grocery shoppers in Missouri came out on top in terms of treating the other side fairly and punishing selfishness. More »
While Kraft is embarking on a company-wide plan to reduce sodium in their food products, the mad scientists at PepsiCo are trying to do them one better. They're about to start making a new "designer salt" for their Lay's brand potato chips that they claim will reduce the amount of sodium you consume without losing any of that great sodium taste. More »
Passover might not be starting until next week, but Coca Cola has already begun distributing 2-liter bottles of its kosher formula, which replaces high fructose corn syrup with sugar, to stores around the country. I know because I've got some chilling in the fridge. More »
Last week, Consumerist reader Aaron went to his local Acme supermarket outside of Philadelphia to pick up some yummy, delicious, Edy's ice cream. Except what he brought home was neither yummy nor delicious because it was 8 months past its sell-by date. More »
Our sister publication ShopSmart asked their readers today what they think of grocery store self-checkout systems. Would you rather stand and watch someone else scan and bag your groceries, or do you prefer to buy your Oreos and hemorrhoid cream without another soul knowing? More »
Perhaps feeling a bit bloated, Kraft Foods Inc. announced earlier today that they're cutting down on the amount of salt used in a number of its most popular products. More »
Do Americans feel strongly enough about high fructose corn syrup to seek out food without it? Will anyone go out of their way and pay extra to find soda or ketchup without the controversial corn-based sweetener? AdAge reports that some companies are removing it from their products, but have discovered that marketing the change without alienating consumers who weren't aware of or simply don't care about the presence of HFCS poses unique problems. More »
Publix wants people with diabetes to become their longterm customers, so they're giving away 30-day supplies of generic metformin in 500 mg, 800 mg, and 1000 mg dosages, with unlimited refills. Although Publix would love it if you subsequently get all your prescriptions filled there, it's not a requirement for the free drug. More »
For years, avian enthusiasts in the UK have been able to get their hands on "fat balls," bird feed in the form of spherical mixtures of suet and seeds intended for winter use. But now, thanks to a few snickering kids, that could all change. More »
The shopper loyalty cards that your grocery store provides can have a higher purpose than giving you discounts, profiling your shopping habits, and racking up points for rewards programs. Loyalty card data can also help track down the source of foodborne pathogens, retaining records of specific brands and items that customers probably won't remember. Trying to find the source of a mysterious salmonella outbreak, the CDC mined grocery loyalty card data to narrow the source down to specific brands of Italian cured meat. More »
A Washington, D.C. law mandates shoppers shell out a nickel for each grocery bag they use, and the regulation has caused people to stop taking as many unnecessary bags and reduced waste, the Baltimore Sun reports. More »
This is also why you're fat. A graph of inflation-adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows how the prices of different food and beverages has changed over the past three decades. The price of crap food over the past 30 years has dropped. At the same time, the food you used to try to hide in your glass of milk has gotten steadily more expensive. No wonder the average man in his 60's is 25 lbs heavier than he was in the late 70's. Hey, govmnt, how about shifting some of those corn and soybean subsidies over to produce growers? More »
The same crappy weather that has Wendy's declaring a only-if-you-ask-for-them tomato policy has made Tropicana pull out ye olde Grocery Shrink Ray, reducing their half-gallon Pure Premium OJ jugs by 5 oz. to 59 oz. More »
A longtime reader sent in a couple of links to websites that let you find out more about your food supply chain, if you're into that sort of stuff. Where is my milk from? matches carton codes with a list of dairies published by the FDA. FoodLogiq is less user-friendly and requires free registration, but you can apparently use it to track produce from participating growers. (Thanks to Cy!)
Say what you will about the heart of the Midwest, it's certainly not hard to find a bar. Geography blog FloatingSheep took a look a the bar-to-grocery store ratio in different parts of the country and it became immediately apparent that Illinois and Wisconsin (and part of Iowa) team up to form the beer belly of America. More »
A new ABC7 investigation shows Campbell's "Healthy Request" and "Low Sodium" tomato soups contain the same nutrients and exact same amount of sodium as regular tomato soups, but they cost more. "Eek! Waiter! There's a scam in my soup!" More »
On the left is a box of Banquet brand frozen spaghetti and meatballs. On the right is what is inside. Disappointed at the lack of visible meatballs, reader reader Sonia snapped the photos and sent them in. On the one hand, that's what you get for eating $1.00 Walmart frozen pasta and meatballs. On the other, well, couldn't they have left at least one in? More »
There's a movement in New York to have the state pass a so-called "soda tax" that impose taxes on soft drinks containing more than 10 calories per 8 ounces. Among the beverages included would be just about all non-diet sodas, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened coffees and teas (only in bottles), and fruit and vegetable juices containing less than 70% natural juice. According to the ads being run by the supporters of the tax, the goal is to curb childhood obesity. But will it really work? More »
The blogger known as HolyJuan made a horrible discovery after purchasing some Hormel brand pepperoni. By purchasing the "Hot & Spicy" pepperoni, he paid the same price per bag for three fewer ounces of pepperoni goodness than the original flavor. What is this nonsense?More »
If you think you're lactose intolerant, the National Institutes of Health says, well... maybe you're not. In a statement released yesterday, the NIH claims that lactose intolerance is nowhere near as prevalent as it's believed and that a general misunderstanding of lactose is causing people to not get the Vitamin D and calcium they need. More »
If there's one thing alcohol distillers and distributors know about it's repititive, compulsive behavior (some might say they depend on it). And a new report suggests that Big Booze's current addiction to discounts and coupons may end up doing long-term damage to the industry. More »
Zachery says when he goes to buy a dozen eggs, he wants to make sure he's not paying for any bad ones, so he opens the cartons and switches them out. He says a fellow shopper told him this was illegal. Obviously this fellow shopper is an idiot, but I thought I'd post Zachary's question anyway just so readers can share their own supermarket QA methods. More »
Cheese is on track to blow up, baby. Global Industry Analysts projects a 20 percent worldwide increase in cheese-munching from 2008 to 2015, when the world will gobble 21 million metric tons of the stuff, according to a press release on PR Web. More »
After the Eggo waffle saga, readers implored us to find the whereabouts of another iconic [to vegetarians] American prepared food: the Morningstar Farms veggie dog. The dogs disappeared from stores nationwide sometime in the summer of 2009, but have never returned. More »
Slate has an interesting article about food expiration dates and their meaning — which can be somewhat slippery. The basic idea is this: You don't have to throw out food just because its past the "Sell By" date. You should inspect your food to see if it has spoiled and try to make a rational decision. More »
Store brand is the new black. Nielesen says that buying of generic brands has increased 8% since 2007. Name brand purchases have dropped ~4%. But here's a question: what's what's never okay to get as a store brand? For me, it's tomato sauce. It's like pouring ketchup on your spaghetti. [Boston Globe via NYT Bucks Blog] (Thanks to James!)
Less than two months after announcing a huge recall of salami and other cured meats that are behind a recent salmonella outbreak, it was announced today that the recall has been expanded even further. More »
Phill tells Consumerist that he saw a pricing error on cereal at his local Safeway, and brought it to the attention of store employees. In the process, he tried to invoke Safeway's price guarantee. After all, if the cereal was marked 28 cents per pound (instead of 28 cents per ounce, as it should have been) why shouldn't Phill be able to buy it at that price? Yet the store employees would hear none of it. More »
Apparently not content to let Toyota and Honda hog all the recall headlines this week, the good folks at grocery store chain Trader Joe's have announced a "my bad" of their own, recalling a few batches of their Trader Joe’s Chocolate Chip Chewy Coated Granola Bars — no, not for having a ridiculously long name — but because you might get sick from eating them. More »
Gawker shared photos of pillaged Safeway and Wegmans stores in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Maybe it's my roots in upstate New York's snow belt, but I have to ask: D.C., you do remember that snow melts, right?
See, this is the effect of mass weather-induced panic and, apparently, an area almost wholly dependent on takeout food. More »
In my household, there's an ongoing argument about whether bagged salad can be eaten straight from the bag, or whether it should be washed first, or why did we buy this bag of salad instead of more beer. When not championing beer, I've always come down on the don't-bother-washing side, but I might finally agree to change my food prep habits after this recent Consumer Reports study that says 39% of bagged salads are contaminated with bacteria. More »
Beer and sausages may indeed be the perfect combination for your Super Bowl gathering, but there's something about this grocery store display from Budweiser and sausage maker Johnsonville that is terribly wrong. I think it's the man's expression as he points to his, er, bratwurst. More »
Chris spotted this sign at a New Jersey supermarket. I'm a fan of the convenient placement of the religious candles, which are one of my favorite ingredients in chili along with rice, beans, potatoes and canned vegetables. More »
Some of Kraft's South Beach Living cereal bars have been reformulated, and the new label boasts that, in addition to a "new lower price," the bars have "twice the protein of the leading cereal bars." That might be true, given that most cereal bars are made up of little more than corn, rice, corn syrup, rice and corn. But the new bars actually have 20% less protein than the previous versions. More »
Matt spotted a disturbing milk stocking method at his unnamed New York grocery store, and is convinced the setup was designed to trick folks into buying milk that is set to soon expire. More »
Charles spotted this fantastic salmon sale at Albertsons, which is aimed at those who take the phrase "a penny saved is a penny earned" to heart. The sign maker may as well have labeled it "Buy 399, Get One Free!" More »
Paul and his wife purchased a pre-cooked feast for eight people at Whole Foods, but they claim that they didn't get their whole order of food. Their two-pound side dishes, sold by weight, actually weighed in at as little as 1 pound, 3 ounces. Is their kitchen scale broken, or is something wrong at Whole Foods? More »
Big box retailers checking receipts is old news. How about getting the suspected shoplifter treatment at a supermarket instead? Even better, how would you like having a security guard knock on your car window, and tell you that you're on private property when you tell him you don't have to show anything? More »
Female Kraft employees are "furious" and the men "embarrassed" by this ad inside their headquarters lobby, reports the ANIMAL blog. It has a mirrored surface and below that it says, "You look smashing, but your chicken breasts could use a lift," followed by an image of Shake N' Bake. Hidden behind that faceless oblong red white and blue logo, Kraft has got some cheeky pranksters! [ANIMAL]
A group of candy makers, publishers, and others threw down some cash on a study to find out what the big impulse buys are at checkout counters. The not-so-surprising results: candy topped the list, at 30% of all purchases. Hey, it's their money. More »
The grocery shrink ray has struck bags of sugar in two different parts of the country. Bags that a rational consumer would assume contain five pounds of sugar—since they've contained five pounds of sugar for as long as most Americans can remember—now contain four pounds of sugar. Somehow, we don't think that grocers are doing this as an effort to reduce Americans' sugar consumption. More »
A new McKinsey report says that a large number of consumers who are switching to cheaper brands during the recession are switching for good. Of those surveyed, 34% said they no longer preferred the costlier products. 41% said that although the liked the better stuff, it wasn't worth it anymore. Have you downgraded during the recession? Is the switch for good? Leave your thoughts in the comments. More »
Padding chip bags with air is a pretty well-understood practice by now—supposedly it helps prevent the chips from being crushed. But what's the purpose of similar packaging tricks in frozen fish, or boxes of instant rice? After a recent Consumer Reports article questioned the amount of air in packages at the grocery store, New York Times reporter Andrew Adam Newman asked two of the manufacturers for an explanation. More »
Is loving New Moon a crime? It is, if you accidentally tape it during your sister's surprise birthday party at the movie theater. Plus, how you will end up paying for Hulu after the Comcast/NBC merger, Oscar Meyer shaved meat, subprime loan gangstas, and a pacifier you might choke on. Now that we have a video show, what should my signoff be? Leave your thoughts in the comments. More »
Maybe Oscar Mayer was thinking that folding the turkey that way would make shoppers think about turkey breasts. Maybe I have spent too much time in the more colorful parts of the Internet. Either way, I am not sure I could see this in the supermarket without doing a double take. And probably giggling. More »
On Tuesday, we published the story of a woman who ordered a turkey from a Publix supermarket deli for her office's Thanksgiving celebration, only to discover that her "fully cooked" turkey was cooked, but cold. This was a problem. Her story had a happy ending, but we heard from a Publix employee who confirmed that selling a cold turkey with no warning is wrong...and would lead to trouble for any employee who tried it at our tipster's store. More »
Wendy was in charge of planning the at-work Thanksgiving feast for her colleagues at her new job, and was happy to take on the task. A series of misunderstandings at the grocery store deli meant that she nearly had to serve her colleagues a fully cooked but entirely cold turkey. More »
—>One year after Tropicana's disastrous redesign of their orange juice packaging, Coca-Cola is debuting a redesign of the cartons in their various lines of fruit juices. Coke's key advantage: the new design isn't hideously ugly. More »
—>Impatient fellow shoppers huffing and puffing behind you are a small price to pay if it means free groceries. Slatedove into the world of hardcore couponing to uncover the secrets of the coupon all-stars. For instance, do you rock the Catalinas? More »
—>The prices of commodities has dropped from their peaks of last year, yet food makers are not reducing consumer prices, reports Marketplace. Now this is rather funny, and familiar. More »
—>We're not quite sure what to make of U.K. grocery chain Tesco. First, the store bans a Jedi after he refuses to lower his hood. And, now, the chain is threatening legal action against two teenage girls who squeezed a couple of muffins to see how fresh they were. More »
—>Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and ATMs didn't exist, if your cave-dwelling ancestor wanted to get cash in a hurry and didn't want to deal with bank lines, he'd go to the local supermarket. There, the friendly high-school student at the checkout counter would allow him to write a check for the amount of cash he needed, and give him the cash in return. Today, however, the only people who actually still use those services are characters in a GEICO ad, so it should come as no surprise that some supermarkets are finally giving up on the practice. More »
—>Banquet Foods wasn't satisfied with reducing the size of their mac & cheese meals by a third, from 12 ounces to 8 ounces. They also increased the price, notes our reader Richard, who confirmed the price hike at both his local Seattle supermarket and at Walmart (although Walmart's prices were lower in both versions). Funny, we thought the whole argument for the shrink ray was that it protected consumers from paying more. More »
—>Society may have come a long way since the 50s, but the grocery shopping tips remain the same. Inside, the wisdom that helped a generation of college-aged mothers conquer the scary supermarket. More »
—>Howcast has produced a quick video tutorial covering the basics of expiration and sell by dates. If you have questions about eggs, meat, canned goods, or storing things in the freezer, check it out. More »
—>CCM just sent us a photo she snapped of these Mission Soft Flour Tortillas. It's kind of cool to see that in this age of the shrink ray, a company is actually giving you more bang for your buck. Except that in this case, the two added tortillas used to be there until a year or so ago. More »
The FDA has issued a new ruling that says egg producers must "test regularly for salmonella and buy chicks from suppliers who do the same," and that eggs "will have to be refrigerated on the farm and during shipment" as well as by wholesalers and in the store. The rule is meant to cut down on the number of egg-related salmonella cases nationwide, which currently are around 142,000 a year. [Washington Post] (Photo: Andreas Kollegger) More »
—>Self check-out is great if, say, you've got one of those supermarkets where the teenaged clerks hate you for choosing their lane and spend more time talking to each other than scanning your items. It's not so great if you force all of your customers to use the system because you've decided to close down every other human-powered lane but one. More »
—>Is it any surprise that after the past few years of outbreaks and recalls, almost no one trusts products from food manufacturers anymore? IBM recently completed a survey of shoppers in the 10 largest cities, and found that a lot of consumers want more information than they currently can get about their food choices. More »
—>Snazzy new bar codes are starting to adorn our fruit and vegetables to stop blurry-eyed cashiers from ringing up organic produce as the cheaper-priced regular stuff. They're called GS1 DataBars, and they're already appearing in select supermarkets to help consumers move faster through checkout lines. More »
—>Consumer Reports says that the supermarket self check-out line is better on your wallet and your gut. "You'll find fewer snacks," they write, "and because of the shorter wait time, you'll have less time to contemplate a snack attack." There's even a study that shows impulse purchases dropped by nearly a third for women and a sixth for men when they chose the self check-out line. You also get to play with the scanner, touchscreen, and bag area, which is a lot more fun than just standing around. (That's right, "bag area.") More »
—>Hey, grocery shopper! You look like a responsible consumer, what with your grocery buying and standing upright. Why not take a moment to fill out an impulse-buy credit card application? If you're approved, we'll give you $25 you can spend on your first charge! More »
—>The Wall Street Journal takes a good look at items marketed as "healthier for you" on supermarket shelves, and as you can probably imagine, any actual health benefits vary greatly from product to product. Take all natural chicken, for example: if you buy "enhanced" or "plumped" chicken—it will say somewhere on the label that water, salt, and/or carrageenan has been added, but it will still be labeled natural—the sodium per 4 oz serving jumps from 45-60 mgs to 200-400 mgs. More »
—>Consumer Reports is gearing up to release their supermarket ratings, but the preliminary results show that supermarkets are trying to help consumers by extending sales and rewarding loyalty. Inside, six ways to save a few bucks next time you fill up your shopping cart. More »
—>Do you enjoy one-stop shopping? Do you love to pick up your groceries, Valium, cat litter, and a nice Cab Sauv all from the same place without the sheer slog of taking out your credit card a whole four times? Well, tough luck, because New York Governor Paterson has nixed his plan to sell wine at supermarkets. Why? More »
Forget all that spin about listening to customer complaints: it looks like the real reason Tropicana killed off its rebranding push after only two months is because sales dropped by 20% during that period, while some big competitors posted double-digit gains. We have a feeling Tropicana is going to end up in a lot of business and marketing textbooks in the future. [AdAge] (Thanks to Ross!)More »
—>Justin sent us this photo of his neighborhood Associated Supermarket in NYC, where a printing error on the latest sales posters didn't stand in the way of putting them up. We guess it was cheaper to just run around throwing handfuls of cocoa powder on everything than to reprint them. More »
—>The Super Stack can of Pringles on the right looks super big and super packed full of chips. It only has 12% more snack inside, though, while it costs 25% more of your money. Luckily, if you're not handy with division or don't have a calculator or phone with you, just look at the price per pound on the tags below. And never trust packaging! More »
—>With the the cost of ingredients, gas prices, and interest rates dropping, why are food manufacturers continuing to hike prices and shrink products? According to the L.A. Times, supermarkets don't know, but they're as pissed as we are. More »
—>A grocery growth ray is set to hit a popular condiment and several kinds of baked corn with names ending "tos." To push the brands as being good values, Heinz will be selling slightly larger ketchup bottles, and Frito-Lay is adding 20% to Tostitos, Fritos, Cheetos and Doritos - without raising the price. Unlike the grocery shrink ray, you can bet this change will be loudly trumpeted on the package. More »
—>A penny-pinching reader discovered that Giant Eagle—a supermarket chain that heavily promotes a savings club where you earn slight discounts on gas—has some jacked up soup prices, especially on their private label. Remember, if you're not comparison shopping among local supermarkets, you can expect easy-to-miss price spikes like this one to wipe out any savings you thought you were getting. More »
Here are 11 fruits and vegetables that typically have low amounts of pesticides. Now we just need to find a recipe for asparagus pineapple onion salad. [The Daily Green] More »
—>Impoverished and hungry Britons can't get enough of Approved Food, a site that sells expired but still edible food for up to half off. Even after shutting down for two days to grapple with a ten-fold rise in traffic, the site warns that they still have to process 12 days worth of backorders. But can't expired food give you salmonella or herpes, you ask? Nope! FDA regulations don't require most foods to carry expiration dates, and selling expired food isn't a violation of federal law. More »
—>Companies are scrambling to make their products seem more affordable in this economic climate, and, in some cases, are resorting to simply making it up. Reader Ben sent in this picture of Personna razor blades. The old pack is on the left, containing 12 razors. The new one is on the right, also containing 12 razors, but it boasts a scratched out 10 and a big 12 and now it's a "Value Pack." You get the same number of razors, pay the same, but now you get the added bonus of feeling like you're a savvy shopper. More »
—>Guess what they call the Grocery Shrink Ray at General Mills? "Holistic Margin Management." I thinks that's also what they call it in 1984. Another interesting fact from a StarTribune article looking at shrinking packages: customers are more likely to notice a change in the height rather than the width of a box. But does anyone really care? More »
—>Reader Zack was curious why three different kinds of Tide detergent on the shelf had the same price and same volume, but the label said they delivered different amounts of loads. Consumer Reports investigated, and they have the answer. More »
The Nash Finch stores Avanza, Food Bonanza and Wholesale Food Outlets add the 10 percent charge to food at the register and specialize in serving Hispanics, according to store workers. More »
—>Shaw's has wised up to the trick of using a basket instead of a shopping cart to physically limit your grocery purchases, and they've come up with a creative workaround: convertible baskets that you can drag behind you on wheels when they become too heavy to carry. More »
—>FrankenChicken moved closer to your dinner table after the FDA announced they're going to begin developing the procedures and guidelines that will allow farmers to genetically engineer animals to have more desirable traits and then sell them to you in the supermarket. For instance, featherless chicken or faster-growing fish. They will not require food to be labeled as genetically modified as long as there's no change in the final product, a move Consumers Union called "incomprehensible." More »
—>The New York Times reports that several supermarket and retail chains, including Safeway, Walmart, and Whole Foods, are beginning to experiment with much smaller store sizes that emphasize things like cafes, prepared meals, and produce. The idea is to emphasize speed over choice, and was apparently triggered by UK competitor Tesco, which has launched over 70 small-format supermarkets in Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California over the past year. Of course, the stores also require less shelf space for products than they did a year ago. More »
—>Wegman's is recalling all in-store made bagels and bialys (flattened bagels) sold between August 24th and September 9th "because the bagels may contain pieces of a metal spring from a mixer that entered the dough." If you have some, return them to your store's customer service desk for a refund. Wegmans says this doesn't affect their frozen bagels. More »
—>This video shows how a variety of food products have shrunk over the years, while the price remains the same, and the tricks manufacturers use so we don't notice the differences. She stacks up the coffee cans as they go from 16 oz to 11 oz. At one point, Maxwell House says that while the size is going down, the potency is going up. "We've fluffed the beans!" they say. So then why do the instructions on the side of the can for the amount of coffee you use to make a perfect cup stay the same? Though we don't really mourn for lost Maxwell House value, the example is illustrative of standard industry tactics, even on food that doesn't taste like crap. More »
—>Here's a perfect example of why you should always approach "healthy" labeling on food products with a skeptical eye. Summer did a quick side-by-side comparison of regular Mott's apple juice with new Mott's Plus Light. What she found was that except for a few added vitamins, the Light product was just Mott's juice diluted by 50% with water—but selling for the same price as the 100% juice. More »
—>Foodmakers are planning to bombard you with advertising to keep you from ditching their carefully groomed brands for some blechy cheapo generics. Pay no attention as they try to re-brand their products as cheap and affordable. Here's a small preview of what to expect... More »
—>Daniel went to his local Safeway with his brother to buy some beer. Daniel had his ID, but his brother didn't—but that's okay, because Daniel was the one buying the beer. The cashier, however, felt otherwise, and wouldn't complete the transaction without carding both of them. The store manager told him "the policy is, at the discretion of the clerk, to check the ID of every person present." More »
—>As any convenience-seeking American knows, the bane of natural peanut butter is its tendency to separate into an unspreadable sludge of crushed peanut and an eager-to-spill pond of oil. You have to stir the two together to get back to the peanut butter texture you've come to expect from the hybridized brands. Skippy says they've solved the problem, but based on the two jars one customer bought, they're plain nuts (wocka wocka!). More »
—>The Grocery Shrink Ray has expanded its range and is no longer just hitting the US. Pint-sized woe has befallen the the UK snack section. For one, the Dairylea triangle is shrinking from 180 to 160g per cheese wheel. Other shrunken products include Rolo, Palmolive, Olvatine, Dairy Milk, Mars bars, Yorkie chocolate bars, and Pringles.Check out the company double-talk as they tried to explain away the changes, sometimes with verbal softshoe, others with oddly pugilistic rebuttals: More »
—>The Chicago Tribune quoted me in a piece on the Grocery Shrink Ray. Paraphrasing a food science. expert, it says, "Broadly defined, packaging costs often outweigh ingredient costs, Hotchkiss said. And a penny shaved off packaging can translate into millions of dollars in savings for a high-volume consumer product." This is interesting because it means the greatest cost savings come from reducing package costs, rather than ingredient amount. Which means if they're reducing ingredient amounts, they've got to be really hurting. Maybe if I really wanted to do my part to help the economy I should have spent that stimulus check on juice, cereal, paper towels, mayonnaise and ice cream. More »
—>Dan can do math in his head, which is a great skill these days when you're checking out the n objects for x price! specials at Target. In this case, Dan notes that the "temporary price cut" is so temporary that it doesn't even exist: you'll pay 13 cents more per box if you buy three of them. This is the third Target "special" we've seen this month that screws the consumer. Are we seeing a new trend? Is it legal to call it a price cut if it's not? More »
—>The notorious Grocery Shrink Ray was supposed to help prevent this, or so we were told by apologists for it, but Datamonitor is reporting that Kraft Foods, Kellogg's, ConAgra, Sara Lee, and Tyson "are all expected to announce a hike in the prices of their products" in the near future. Here are some of the hikes you can expect, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. More »
—>Pew! Pew! Grocery Shrink Ray zapped Skippy Natural Peanut Butter. You know what's really going to be something? When they start raising the prices on all the products they shrunk. Then we'll see some real purchasing power loss. More »
—>You cringe over the price of a gallon of gas, but what about a gallon of Visine? An article in the September issue of ShopSmart shows that if you bought the eye drops by the gallon, the price would be $1,021. Steak sauce? $48. Secret Platinum, $189. Obviously, no one buys Visine by the gallon, except for maybe Cyclops (hey, that stick still burns). Similiarly, except for hobbyists, no one buys a dropper of gasoline. And there are cost-savings by selling and buying items in bulk. Still, makes you think... More »
This morning, very early in the morning, we were on KTLK in Minnesota talking about, yep, you guessed it, the Grocery Shrink Ray. Clip is here. And earlier this week we were featured in an article in the UK's Observer. More »
—>Is your supermarket the victim of The Grocery Shrink Ray, the force that is shrinking how much product you get while keeping the price the same? Here are three antidotes: More »
—>Science has taken us to Mars, plumbed the twilight depths of the ocean, and manipulated the very fibers of existence on the subatomic level, and now, minus giblets, put an entire chicken into a can. Commenter AlexTNOA alerts us that you can get it on Amazon, too, where the writeup says it's, "...ready for soups, stews and quick dinners...Great to have on-hand in your pantry for emergency dinners." Hm, how might those instructions read...something like: Open can, plop contents on plate, cover with plastic wrap, cook in microwave on high for 60 seconds, remove plate and wrapper, sculpt contents into shape of chicken. Serves 3-5...More »
—>Saving money at the supermarket has never been more important or difficult thanks to the tag team threat of inflation and the Grocery Shrink Ray. Get Rich Slowly published 15 money-saving tips to help you hold onto your hard-earned cash. More »
—>After Nebraska Beef, Ltd., recalled 531,707 pounds of beef for a possible E.coli contamination, Kroger is recalling beef from its stores and from stores selling beef under its label. The recall includes nearly all kinds and weights of ground beef with Kroger labels sold between 5/21 and 6/08. The sell-by date on them will fall between 5/21 and 6/05. Not included are ground beef in sealed tubes in 1,3, or 5lb sizes, or Frozen Beef Patties or Ground Beef Patties found in the frozen food aisle. Other caveats apply and there may be more updates, check the Kroger Recall page for the latest information. E.coli can cause food poisoning or even death. If you have any of this meat, you can either throw it away or return it to Kroger for a full refund. More »
—>Media interest in The Grocery Shrink Ray sweeping across America continues, I was interviewed recently by CNNMoney.com, The Brian Lehrer Show, and Agence France-Press. Everyone knows prices are higher and manufacturers need to pass them on somehow. I don't like the method of shrinking sizes while keeping the prices the same. Or when they combine it with a package redesign, hoping we'll be so distracted by a new spigot that we won't notice we're getting less. My local pizza parlor went about it differently. They raised prices and taped up two articles explaining how rising wheat costs are driving up the cost of making pizza. They didn't, however, cut their pies into 12 slices instead of 8. More »
—>It looks like the fell Grocery Shrink Ray may have hit cans of Arizona Ice Tea, reducing the size of their 12 oz cans to 11.5 oz cans. We couldn't find any definite pictures of 12oz Arizona Ice Tea cans, but we did find them being sold on this website in 12 oz cans. What happens to a product when the shrink ray hits it? I imagine it goes eek! eek! eek! and the last eek is an octave higher than the first. More »
—>A bill is advancing through the Massachusetts legislature that will allow supermarkets to leave off item price tags and instead force customers to rely on electronic scanners spaced throughout the store. Although prices will still need to be displayed on store shelves for most items, you'll have to rely on your memory and your faith in the store's scanner system at checkout. John Hurst, the president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, "said consumers will benefit in the form of lower prices and shortened lines once stores no longer need to devote resources to item-by-item pricing." But kjd aa- [thump] More »
Consumerist Editor Ben Popken (hey, that's me!) talks about the grocery shrink ray today at 5:30 PM Eastern on WTVT-TV FOX 13 in Florida. More »
—>Is it ok for stores to sell food that's expired? It depends. It is illegal for stores to sell food past its "Use By" date. However, stores are allowed to sell food after it has passed the "Best Until" "Best Before" "Sell By" or "Display Until" dates stamped on the sides of packages. As the name suggests, it just might not be its best, in terms of flavor, consistency, or texture. Still, why get the old stuff when you can get the fresh for the same price? Always check the expiration dates on food packages to make sure you're getting the best value for your dollar. More »
—>These Sun Chips have shrunk from 11.5 oz to 10.5 oz and are still being sold at the same price. "Not even healthy foods that normally are already sold in smaller portions are safe," says tipster MasonTwo who spotted these on the shelves at Walmart. CNN says the products most vulnerable to the Grocery Shrink Ray are paper towels, potato chips, sticks of gum, toilet paper, detergent and candy bars. Hey, look at the bright side, maybe the Grocery Shrink Ray is just what we need to fight the obesity crisis. More »
Attention Floridian Consumerists! Provided everything goes according to schedule, I will be on Fox Tampa Thursday during the 10pm newscast, talking about the mysterious Grocery Shrink Ray sweeping across America. More »
—>A reader in Redding, California was shopping at the local Winco and saw this ultra-patriotic bag of frozen tilapia—if it were any prouder to be an American it would have to start singing country music. But when glugory turned the bag over, the phrase "Product of China" was stamped across the bottom. "So now these bastards are lulling you into a false sense of patriotism in order to sell their commie fish," writes glugory. That might be overstating it a bit, but we're fans of overstating things here at Consumerist, so... yeah! Damned commie fish! Remember: never trust packaging. It's just marketing you can hold. More »
—>Sorry New Yorkers, but according to the City Council, you're overpaying for both rent and milk. Anyone charging more than $3.93 for a gallon—86% of the city's milk sellers, from bodegas to Whole Foods—is violating the state's milk price-gouging law. More »
—>Reader Colin was watching his groceries travel along the conveyor belt at the Kroger checkout counter when he noticed some of his fruit snacks suddenly vanish from the line of items. With his interest piqued, Colin looked carefully and discovered a strange hinged door at the end of the belt. Upon making the discovery, the cashier slowly raised the steel flap and discovered Colin's lost fruit snacks along with a bounty of hapless groceries that had that had been arbitrarily swallowed by this clandestine trap. Because the items had already been scanned and purchased, the cashier offered them to Colin as a prize for unlocking the secret of the mysterious trap-door. Colin's letter, inside... More »
—>Will in Georgia thought he'd try to take advantage of the Click 'n' Pull program offered by Sam's Club—you make your shopping list ahead of time (the "click" part) and the store pulls it all for you and calls you when it's ready to pick up. Based on Will's experiences so far, the program isn't quite ready for Georgians. More »
Expired items are lurking on store shelves. A Fox5 investigation followed around the Nassau County's Office of Consumer Affairs and found evaporated skim milk and diabetic medicine on the shelf that expired over a year ago. At a dollar store, they found the manager was cutting the expiration dates off boxes of expired toothpaste and still selling them. The Stop and Shop was fined $1450 for selling expired goods, the dollar store, $13,225 for 529 items. Don't forget to check the expiration date, the store, or the Consumer Affairs Office, isn't always going to do it for you. More »
—>Crissy Thompson (pictured left) is among the coupon clipping elite. 11Alive News followed her around one day to learn some of her secrets. At a local Publix, Crissy managed to get two-thirds off her grocery bill and at CVS picked up $140 worth of goods for $5. Often, she spends only $10 a week on groceries and that's with 3 kids and a husband. Check out some of her techniques and her favorite coupon web sites, inside... More »
—>Last week, the Grocery Manufacturers Association told lawmakers that if the FDA doubled its safety oversight budget by increasing fees from food companies, they'd have to raise prices to make up the cost. That's right: affordable food or safe food. Choose one! More »
As supermarket prices rise, people aren't just trading down from name brand food to store brands, they're also trading down from more expensive organic brands. Also, making their own detergent. [CNN Money] More »
—> Most corporate credit card data theft happens at the database level, like the massive T.J. Maxx breach. But Hannaford has notified investigators that the recent theft of 4.2 million accounts was caused by malware that was installed on the servers at each of its 300 locations. The software "intercepted data from customers as they paid with plastic at checkout counters and sent data overseas," reports CNET. More »
—> For the ultimate in pricing transparency when shopping for groceries, use a price book. Frugal bloggers everywhere write about it like it's the GTD of grocery shopping, and our own reader marsneedsrabbits suggested it in a thread earlier this week:
The solution to all this is a price book. It costs whatever a cheap notebook costs you, and saves a surprising amount of money and starts saving you money immediately.
If you're detail oriented and ready to start cutting costs at the supermarket, here's more info along with links to downloadable forms, spreadsheets (for those spreadsheet junkies), and advice. More »
—>A security breach at the Hannaford east coast supermarket chain has lead to the exposure of some 4.2 million credit cards. The company said it was aware of at least 1,800 cases of fraud directly connected to the breach. If you shopped at Hannaford's from Dec. 7 to March 10., when the breach is thought to have occurred, now is a great time to close your current credit and debit cards and get new ones. Side note: when clicking around their official website we found many sub-pages are down, saying they're currently "undergoing site maintenance." More »
—>Who really owns some of the biggest organic brands in the country? GOOD magazine made one of their sexy graphs to show you. For instance, Coke owns Odwalla, Pepsi owns Naked, and Kraft owns Boca Burgers. The chart also shows you that these parent companies are among the top 30 food processing companies. Not like we're talking a giant scandal or anything, it's just interesting to know more about where your food is really coming from. Just because it's organic doesn't mean it was made on a happy communal love-farm . More »
Jose writes, I thought that the long lines and the produce always being out of stock was bad enough, but then I noticed the small family of birds living at my local Safeway (Nutley St, Fairfax, VA). More »
—>That is some lean beef right there. Reader Sam shares this picture of pieces of fish a Ralphs grocery store in Los Angeles mistakingly labeled as boneless chuck steak. This genetically modified food craze has gotten well out of hand. At least it's "farm raised." More »
—> Trent at the Simple Dollar describes the "one month coupon strategy"—a cool trick that lets you line up coupons with in-store sales for massive discounts. Set aside grocery coupons for a month, then go through and select the ones you're interested in. Bring them to the store and you'll find that many of them are for products that are now on sale. On Trent's last visit to the supermarket, approximately 40% of the coupons matched on-sale products—in the most extreme example, he was able to purchase some ice cream for 19 cents. More »
—>A Vermont judge sent his sheriff to the mall to round up a jury that could fairly try a child molester.
They stopped passers-by and asked if they were residents of Caledonia County; a "yes" answer won a summons to appear at the courthouse for jury duty immediately, right now, this minute. They rounded up 45 people that way in all, to join the 34 already at the courthouse.
Whole Foods is recalling its 365 Organic Everyday Value™ Swiss Milk Chocolate Bars with Rice Crisps, 3-ounce size, with a Best If Used By date of 11/21/07, because the batch may contain undeclared hazelnuts, walnuts, and pecans. [FDA] More »
—>I bought pre-sliced onions at the supermarket last time I went food shopping. Just because it was totally stupid, and i wanted to know what it felt like to buy onions someone had thoughtfully chopped for me and placed inside a little plastic tub. More »
—> The Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI), a supplemental, easy-to-read nutrition labeling system, will be introduced on a voluntary basis next year by participating Wegmans, IGA, Hy-Vee, and Food City grocers. ONQI was developed by a bunch of nutrition and health experts and assigns products a value from 1 to 100 by scoring a number of good and bad qualities of the food. Shoppers can then compare similar products easily to see which one is more nutritionally sound. More »
—> In the grand scheme of things to watch out for—heavy metals, date rape drugs, foreclosure—a jar of less-than-potent nutmeg might not seem like such a big deal. But most ground spices lose their potency after only six months, which means households all across the country are about to enter the most spice-centric time of the year with expired spices. Spice seller McCormick now offers a handy spice-dating service via its website, which is how one highly excitable reader discovered that her local supermarket was selling stuff that was 5 years old. More »
—>So I was in the grocery store this morning buying three rolls of toilet paper and a bottle of seltzer with a credit card, as I am wont to do. (It was on my way back from the gym and I had brought a credit card just for this purpose. I didn't have any cash, I don't like to bring my wallet to the gym, and I don't like to have to futz with lockers). More »
—> Over a year and a half ago, we alerted readers to the sneaky practice of using carbon monoxide to indefinitely preserve raw meat's red color—several stores admitted to the practice, and while the small amount of gas used does not pose a health risk, the perma-red meat can make it harder to detect spoilage. Now, in the wake of so many food and product safety scandals, the government has proposed a new mandatory warning label as part of the Food and Drug Import Safety Act of 2007. It would read:
Carbon monoxide has been used to preserve the color of this product. Do not rely on color or the 'use or freeze by' date alone to judge the freshness or safety of the product. Discard any product with an unpleasant odor, slime, or a bulging package.
—>This random, unverified comment scavenged from Metafilter archives syncs in with our preconceived notions and suspicions just enough that we're going to publish it and wonder aloud if it is true:
When I was a kid I remember taking a tour of the big Wonder Bread factory in our town. I was scarred for life when I realized that one of the production lines for loaves of bread that I was following split into two packaging lanes just before the plastic went over the loaf. One lane was for Wonder, the other was for the local supermarket brand.
Is it really all just packaging? Bring on the blind taste tests. More »
—> Now that the Whole Foods organic supermarket chain has finally completed its acquisition of former competitor Wild Oats Markets, it's time for the horrible price gouging we were warned about to kick in. That's why today Whole Foods announced a permanent price reduction at all Wild Oats stores in the Rocky Mountain Region, and stated that all Wild Oats stores in its hometown of Boulder will remain unchanged. Wait—what? Of course, this amounts to mostly a publicity stunt (or goodwill gesture, depending on your level of cynicism); at least one Wild Oats store in another part of the country has already been closed. More »
—>"I do the grocery shopping for my partner who is totally disabled. He is paralyzed on the right side and suffers from quite a few other health related issues. When we moved to Savannah, Georgia two years ago, I noticed that when I used his EBT (food stamp) card at a Kroger store that I was being charged tax on food coupons. While Georgia is a state that does charge tax on grocery store food, and some grocery coupons state that it is the customer's responsibility to pay any tax, it is illegal to charge food stamp recipients tax no matter what."More »
—>Instead of just printing coupons on the receipt, Meijer put this warning, using purchase history tracked to her credit card, that reader Sarah may have purchased products recalled for botulism. More »
—>Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Spirals cost 37 cents more per box than regular Elbow variety, despite the former weighing 1.75 oz less than the latter, reports the thoughts on technology blog. This breaks down to a difference of $.06/oz, vs $.14/oz. That's 24% fewer noodles, with a 133% price increase. More »
20 Ways to Save Money at the Grocery Store [Curbly] More »
—>Jewel-Osco, a Midwest supermarket, introduced a biometric payment system. After signing up and associating your fingerprint with your credit card, you can buy groceries just by pushing your finger on a reader at checkout and entering your "search number." More »
A photoblog celebrating the grocery stores of yesteryear. The site's author says he would, "be happiest if supermarket evolution had ceased around 1968 or so." [Groceteria via Your Daily Awesome] More »
Four strawberries for $4, two pounds of asparagus from $34, and Ostrich eggs for $54 are just some of the many "deals" at the new Whole Foods in London: "What used to be said about Rolls Royce cars now holds true for potatoes: If you have to ask the price, you can't afford one." More »
—>Whole Foods in Manhattan has made checkout line races a thing of the past by adopting newfangled bank-style checkout lanes. The new system queues shoppers in a single line, directing them to checkout counters as cashiers become available.
The single-line, bank-style system was quickly chosen for its statistical efficiency. Then, Whole Foods paired the system with possibly the largest number of registers in the city, more than 30 per store, and it hired an army of cashiers to staff them throughout the day (including "floaters" to fill in for those who need a break). More »
—>"Tare" or "tare weight" is the weight of an empty container. Tare is not included in a goods' net weight. So, for instance, 32-oz jar of mayo on the supermarket shelf should actually weight more than two pounds. More »
You know how it is, picking at knots for minutes, whittling down your fingernails, and then you get frustrated and say forget it, I'm going to eat some cookies from this nice, easy jar. More »
—>Faye over at "The Dollar Stretcher" doesn't wait for desirable coupons to appear in the weekly circular. She writes directly to her favorite brands asking for coupons. The results are surprising.
Since September, I have been sending emails and making toll-free phone calls to manufacturers who make the products we like. The email I send is nearly the same for each company. First, I let them know how much our family likes their product. Then I mention that I am a stay-at-home mom who needs to stick to a budget. Next, I politely ask if they have any coupons available. Finally, I thank them again for such a great product. Here are the results of my little coupon request experiment: More »
—>San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to ban the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags; supermarkets across the city will retrain their employees to ask: paper or biodegradable plastic?
The Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance, written by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and Co., sponsored by six other supervisors, gives major supermarket chains with more than $2 million in annual sales six months to make the switch to biodegradable bags. Pharmacies and retailers with at least five locations have one year. Violators face fines of up to $500.
Supermarkets have let economics guide their choice between paper and plastic. Paper bags cost four cents, while plastic bags cost a penny. The largest San Francisco supermarket hands out 125 million plastic bags each year. More »
—>Lyzadanger took this high angle, wide angle shot of a Fred Meyer store in Portland, Oregon. Check out the Flickr page for the 2800 x 1853 original. Makes us want to dive in like Scrooge McDuck. — BEN POPKEN More »
—>The Freakonomics Blog had an interesting piece the other day about shoplifting in supermarkets. Theft of "Health and Beauty" items (usually the most stolen category) is down this year. The category has been surpassed by "meat and analgesics." When we're broke we want to eat a steak and get numb, right? That's the American dream, right there. More »
—>We took this cameraphone picture of an elderly lady in the supermarket, using a magnifying glass to inspect cans of cat food. She looked at three different cans, then walked away without choosing any. More »
Oftentimes, people will grocery shop hungry, forget the list wadded in their pocket, and grab whatever looks yummy. Once home, they realize they bought 16 rotisserie chickens, a box of Chex Mix and a 6 pack of Rolling Rock. More »
Before you lay into the baggage boy for not triple plying your groceries, just remember he's a human too, with wants, needs, desires, and a love of Sailor Moon. More »
—>Provoked by our post on the same, Derrick was enraged that Hellman's has reduced the size of their mayo jars from 32 to 30 oz, while keeping the same price. He wrote them a letter and here's how the sandwich Nazis responded: More »
—>"Some things always come in quarts: milk, motor oil, and mayonnaise, for example. You don't have to look at the net weight statement, because a quart is 32 ounces, and that is what you always get," writes the MousePrint blog. More »
—>A King Soopers at at East Ninth Avenue and Corona Street in Denver got a little bad press this week after reports emerged that it was upselling at the checkout line. What was the product cashiers were asking with their groceries? Not Mentos, Soaps Today or batteries, but cancer sticks. That's right, cigarettes. More »
—>One time we bought some kitty litter at a NJ Shop Rite and noticed the price at checkout was higher than on the in-store label. Standard store policy says this means we get it for free. We brought bag up to customer service. They sent a stock boy to check the aisle. He returned and said we were wrong. We went back to the shelves ourselves, grabbed the label, and presented it to the desk. Customer service people sheepishly gave us the litter on the house. More »
Desirous of being a productive member of society and needing a way to subsidize his Marlboro Light addiction, Bill got himself hired at Kroger supermarkets. The strenuous application process required he walk up to the customer service desk, express his interet, fill out a form, take an oral drug test and be able to fit into a "cotton-poly blend Kroger polo shirt. " More »
—>Sure, they aren't glamorous posts. No one diggs them; Xeni Jardin does not deign to cast her appraising eye over them. But we still make a point of posting the good along with the bad. After all, when an executive or CEO sees his company's name here along with a complaint, we want them to know he's done fucked up good. But we also want the same guy to have a bit of a glow when his company's done something right. More »
—>A little alarmist, but still fun, Get Rich Slowly has a great summary of the top ten tricks supermarkets like to play on you. Of particular interest are the claims that: More »
