Friday Fundaa | Your chocolate bar is lying to you

A short weekly moment of "huh, didn't know that" from the world of markets and money.

Same price. Same wrapper. Fewer chips.

That's shrinkflation — the sneaky cousin of regular inflation that nobody talks about, because it's technically not inflation at all. Prices didn't go up. You just got... less.

Companies love it for one simple reason: consumers notice a price hike immediately. A price tag jumping from $4.99 to $5.49 feels like a gut punch. A bag that's 15% lighter? You shrug and chalk it up to "felt like more last time."

Shrinkflation spiked hard in 2022-23 when companies faced rising input costs and couldn't pass everything through the sticker price cleanly. Orange juice cartons shrank from 64oz to 52oz. A "family size" bag of Doritos quietly lost around 20% of its contents. Toilet paper rolls got narrower — same cardboard tube, less paper.

Here's the part that should bother you: official CPI doesn't fully capture this. It tracks price per unit — but when the unit quietly shrinks, the data looks tame while your actual grocery bill keeps climbing. Economists have a term for it: quality-adjusted inflation. It's one reason why "inflation is cooling" and "everything still feels expensive" can both be true at the same time.

Next time something tastes like there used to be more of it — there probably was.

Friday Fundaa runs weekly. If you're not already getting our full editions: - Market Day Break — a daily market briefing, out each morning - Framework Foundry Weekly — macro trends, index moves, and what it means for your money

Read the latest at frameworkfoundry.info