What is shrinkflation?

Explained · 5 October 2026 · 6 minute read

Shrinkflation is when a product gets smaller while its price stays the same, so every gram, sheet or biscuit costs more. The UK's Office for National Statistics counted 206 products that shrank between September 2015 and June 2017, against 79 that grew, and found the price usually stayed where it was.

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The pack got smaller. The price stayed put.

What does shrinkflation mean in simple terms?

The word is shrink plus inflation. The price on the shelf stays where it was. The pack does the moving. A bag holds fewer crisps, a roll has fewer sheets, a bar loses a square, and the till receipt looks exactly like last month's.

It is still a price rise. It has only been put where people don't look. Most of us remember what a thing costs. Almost nobody remembers what it weighed.

I can vouch for that. I measured my ten pound note every morning for a year. Same size every time. So I assumed all was well. Nobody told me to measure the biscuits.

Two things stand out. Shrinking is real but rare: in a year, about one or two food products in every hundred. And when the size did change, the ONS found that “prices tended not to change when products changed size”. Which is the whole trick.

For every 206 that shrank, 79 grew. No one has ever rung me to say their biscuits got bigger. I'd remember. I'd have gone round.

Is shrinkflation included in the inflation figures?

In the UK, yes. When a price collector sees that a pack has changed size, they record the old and new weight of the product, and the statisticians treat the smaller pack as a price rise. The ONS gives its own example: a chocolate bar going from 85 grams to 80 grams. Same price, fewer grams. That is a rise of 6.25% in the price of each gram, and that rise is what goes into the index.

So the official inflation figure already has shrinkflation inside it. Over the five and a half years the ONS studied, it added about 0.03 percentage points to the overall index. In the sweets aisle it added 1.22. Small on paper. Noticeable at eleven o'clock with a cup of tea.

How much dearer is a smaller pack?

The sum is short: the old size divided by the new size. Whatever is left over above one is the price rise.

Here is mine. These numbers are my own and I made them up. My usual packet of Rich Tea was 300 grams for £1.50. One morning it was 250 grams for £1.50. That is 20% dearer for every biscuit, and the price never moved. I'd been watching the price. The price hadn't moved.

Which products shrink the most?

By category, most of the size changes were in food and drink: 70% of the reductions and 71% of the increases. Within food, the ONS lists bread and cereals, meat, and sugar, jam, syrups, chocolate and confectionery. Outside food, the busiest group was personal care, which covers things such as toilet rolls, nappies and tissues.

Toilet rolls. I had noticed. I'd put it down to a change in my circumstances.

Scripted comedy. Rich and M are AI characters and the £14 million never existed. Nothing here is advice.