If the drop in weight was accompanied by a drop in price I think the health angle would stick better.
replyYou must be extremely naive if you think corporations do anything other than what benefits them in a very direct and often monetary way, especially food corporations.
replyYou're paying more and getting less, usually both in quality and quantity, I don't see any reason to be happy about it.
The problem is deception. People aren't going to check the weight and ingredients label every time they buy a product. A small size decrease won't get caught.
replyThe point might be more convincing if prices reflected the smaller portions.
replyYour framing makes it seem like these companies decided to reduce the size of their products for the health of their customers. We all know they're doing it to save on costs and increase profits.
replyWhy would news outlets go the extra mile and re-frame it as "Companies are reducing the size of unhealthy products while maintaining the same price and here's why that's a good thing..." unless they were in the pocket of these companies? That would be editorializing to me.
Is obesity more or less prevalent now versus 1991?
replyWell obviously it's more prevalent. But you don't know what the prevalence would have been had Mars bars not shrunk, ie it could have been worse.
replyNot that I actually believe that Mars bar size had any meaningful effect, but your rhetorical question is nonsensical.
Not sure what point you are making, it is more prevalent now, but it would be wrong to say this is because mars bars are more expensive and smaller.
replyI am responding to a comment that is framing the reduced size as a good thing from an obesity perspective...
replythe common denominator is that most "news" is pure entertainment and outrage porn sells. there is no further substance
replyThe bad thing isn't the smaller size, it's the deception that goes along with it. Sometimes companies introduce a smaller size as a smaller size, and nobody cares when that happens. Small size candy bars are common and everybody's fine with it. The uproar is when they shrink an existing product while hiding the size change as much as they can.
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