Favorite brands' packaging is shrinking

Shoppers have trained themselves to check the price, nutritional information and ingredients for their favorite products.

Now add another thing to look for: the net weight or net contents statement.

Are you paying the same, or more, for fewer ounces of product?

Companies across the food chain have cut weights of products to make up for drastic increases in manufacturing and shipping costs as well as raw materials. "Raw materials" could include everything from the plastics that make up containers to the actual ingredients within them.

In some cases, as with Tropicana orange juice, which decreased the size of its plastic jug from 96 to 89 ounces, manufacturers say improvements to packaging make up for the cut.

On its "pure premium" orange-juice line, Tropicana has subbed a snap-cap for its traditional screw-on cap and has remodeled the jug to make it easier to pour and to reduce spilling, company spokesman Jamie Stein said.

Tropicana's price stays the same, but, "We do feel like value was added with this new ergonomic design," she said.

Still, 7 ounces are gone from the jug. That's something consumers may not detect, said consumer lawyer Edgar Dworsky, founder of MousePrint.org, which keeps an eye on product changes.

"Unless you luck out and are at the shelf at the exact moment the switches are made and see the old and new products side by side, you may not notice," he said.

But stand two cartons of Edy's Slow-Churned ice cream next to each other, as Dworsky does on his Web site, and you'll note that the new carton is shorter than the old one. Contents marked on the cartons have decreased from 1.75 to 1.5 quarts.

It's the same for Breyer's ice cream, whose package contents also went down from 1.75 to 1.5 quarts.

Farther down the dairy aisle, Shedd's Spread Country Crock margarine has been reduced from 48 ounces to 45 ounces.

Along with ingredient prices, manufacturing and transportation costs have also surged, said Unilever, the maker of Breyer's and Country Crock, in a written statement: "We have chosen to reduce package sizes as one of our responses to these dramatic input cost increases."

Hellmann's mayonnaise, another Unilever product, now comes in a 30-ounce jar, decreased from 32 ounces.

Notice a change in content and cost of Cheerios? In June 2007, General Mills reduced package sizes and decreased the prices per box at the same time. But because package sizes were reduced by a slightly larger percentage, "the result on a per-ounce basis was a low, single-digit price increase," said Maerenn Ball, a company spokesman.

These changes of 2 and 3 ounces may seem like a minor reduction. But if a manufacturer produces, say, 100,000 units, those ounces can add up to big cost savings — for the maker.

Some companies have been forthright about raising prices without changing product size. J.M. Smucker Co. of Orrville, Ohio, which owns 24 national products, such as Jif peanut butter, Hungry Jack products and Crisco shortening and oils, has increased prices from 3 to 10 percent but has not reduced package amounts, said Maribeth Badertscher, director of corporate communications.

"The entire food industry has been impacted by escalating commodity prices across the board," she said, "but we try to do the best we can to minimize the impact on the consumer."

Frito-Lay, makers of Fritos and Lay's potato chips, has taken two measures to keep its costs in line, said Aurora Gonzalez, a company representative. Prices have been increased up to 20 cents on some products whose net weights have stayed the same. On other Frito-Lay items whose prices remain the same, net weights have been reduced by 3/4 ounce to 2 ounces.