# ‘Skimpflation’ Could Be the Sneakiest Consumer Grift

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 30 Jul 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/b66d3747-a46d-4ff6-acb6-b4970162d7b6/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

From margarine to chocolate treats, some brands are swapping in cheaper ingredients to save money on their most beloved products. It’s a trend known as “skimpflation.” But what happens when consumers start to notice? On today’s Big Take podcast, Stacey Vanek Smith hears from Brad Reese, grandson of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup creator, about his crusade against the practice, the multi-million-dollar cottage industry that’s formed around it and the economic conditions that got us here in the first place. Read more: How Brands Sneak In Cheaper Ingredients to Protect Their Profit Margins We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:08] Speaker 2: So I read you've been eating peanut butter cups quite
[0:11] Speaker 2: frequently since you were a kid.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love them.
[0:15] Speaker 3: I mean it's absolutely People say it's the crack cocaine
[0:18] Speaker 3: of candy.
[0:19] Speaker 2: This is Brad Reese, and if you haven't already guessed,
[0:22] Speaker 2: he is a big fan of Reese's peanut butter cups.
[0:25] Speaker 2: But he is not just a fan.
[0:28] Speaker 3: My dad was Charles Richard Reese, who was the youngest
[0:32] Speaker 3: of the sixteen children of HV. Reese, the inventor of races, and.
[0:38] Speaker 2: Brad leans into that candy lineage hard. Sometimes he wears
[0:43] Speaker 2: a bright orange Reese's branded racing jacket in public, and
[0:47] Speaker 2: people notice.
[0:48] Speaker 3: It's like being a celebrity, but without the hassle of
[0:52] Speaker 3: being a celebrity. And what I mean by that is
[0:53] Speaker 3: I could turn the light switch on or turn the
[0:56] Speaker 3: light switch off. How do I turn it on? I've
[0:59] Speaker 3: put something on that reeses.
[1:01] Speaker 2: Brad understands what makes a Reese's peanut buttercup special too,
[1:05] Speaker 2: that smooth chocolate taste, those little ridges that give way
[1:09] Speaker 2: to the creamy peanut butter center. But lately Brad's relationship
[1:13] Speaker 2: with the brand has gotten more complicated. Reese's was bought
[1:16] Speaker 2: by Hershey back in nineteen sixty three, and in the
[1:19] Speaker 2: year since, Brad says He's found himself time and time
[1:22] Speaker 2: again unwrapping a peanut buttercup taking a bite.
[1:25] Speaker 3: And I'd say something's not right.
[1:27] Speaker 2: But was Brad's hunch just a hunch? From chocolate bars
[1:31] Speaker 2: to margarine, A lot of beloved brands have been quietly
[1:34] Speaker 2: swapping out ingredients for less expensive substitutes as they grapple
[1:38] Speaker 2: with surging costs. It's a practice NPR reporter Greg Rizolski
[1:42] Speaker 2: calls scamflation.
[1:44] Speaker 1: An anonymous survey of three hundred large food and beverage
[1:48] Speaker 1: brands showed that nearly two thirds.
[1:49] Speaker 2: Of them reformulated at least six recipes.
[1:53] Speaker 1: Probably a lot of products that used to have one
[1:54] Speaker 1: hundred percent oliviil will mostly olive OI will probably now
[1:57] Speaker 1: have more of a blend.
[1:58] Speaker 4: I think manufactures forever have fiddled with the formulas and
[2:02] Speaker 4: formulations of their products. Has it always been for the good?
[2:07] Speaker 4: You know, maybe as costs go up it hasn't been.
[2:11] Speaker 2: That's Edgar Dwarski, a consumer advocate who runs the watchdog
[2:14] Speaker 2: website consumerworld dot org, and he's been digging into the
[2:18] Speaker 2: question what happens when companies tinker with the recipes of
[2:22] Speaker 2: their beloved consumer products to cut costs.
[2:25] Speaker 4: Consumers aren't in the habit of memorizing the ingredients list.
[2:30] Speaker 4: You're making an assumption that it's still the same as
[2:34] Speaker 4: what it was, But you can't assume that anymore.
[2:39] Speaker 2: I'm Stacey Mannick Smith in for David Gera and Sarah Holder,
[2:42] Speaker 2: and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today.
[2:46] Speaker 2: On the show, could scinflation be the biggest consumer grift
[2:49] Speaker 2: out there? And what happens when consumers notice the difference
[2:54] Speaker 2: in their favorite products when inflation is high puts pressure
[3:00] Speaker 2: on both consumers and companies to find ways to cut costs.
[3:05] Speaker 2: That has led to a couple of trends. One is
[3:08] Speaker 2: called shrink flation. That is when companies sell less of
[3:11] Speaker 2: their product but charge a similar price. President Biden actually
[3:15] Speaker 2: called out this practice in a video back in twenty
[3:18] Speaker 2: twenty four.
[3:19] Speaker 3: It's a rip off. Some companies are trying to pull
[3:21] Speaker 3: a fast one by shrinking the products a little by
[3:24] Speaker 3: little and hoping you won't notice.
[3:26] Speaker 5: Give me a break.
[3:28] Speaker 2: President Trump made his own demonstration of the trend by
[3:31] Speaker 2: holding up two different sizes of tic tac containers at
[3:35] Speaker 2: a campaign rally that same year.
[3:37] Speaker 4: This is inflation. This is TikTok, This is inflation. This
[3:42] Speaker 4: is what's happened.
[3:47] Speaker 2: The economic conditions companies are responding to when they make
[3:50] Speaker 2: these shifts are pretty stark. Americans are paying about thirty
[3:54] Speaker 2: two percent more for their groceries than they were before
[3:57] Speaker 2: the pandemic. According to government data, Companies are paying over
[4:01] Speaker 2: forty five percent more for their ingredients and raw materials.
[4:05] Speaker 4: Chocolate has been very expensive, and ground coffee.
[4:09] Speaker 2: So are there other products where you're seeing this kind
[4:11] Speaker 2: of nipping and tucking.
[4:13] Speaker 4: There are very few categories where we haven't seen it.
[4:17] Speaker 2: Edgar Dwarski told me there are three ways companies tend
[4:21] Speaker 2: to react in moments of high inflation. One is simply
[4:25] Speaker 2: raising prices.
[4:26] Speaker 4: But they know consumers are price conscious and they're going
[4:29] Speaker 4: to notice if the price has gone up.
[4:32] Speaker 2: Option two is shrink flation, taking.
[4:35] Speaker 4: Out a little bit of the product contents from the package,
[4:39] Speaker 4: try to keep the package looking the same so in essence,
[4:42] Speaker 4: the consumers getting less for their money.
[4:45] Speaker 2: Or option three.
[4:46] Speaker 4: They can try to cheapen the product in some way
[4:50] Speaker 4: use less expensive ingredients and that's skimpflation.
[4:55] Speaker 3: Consumers are realizing the product is inferior. Now it's eroding
[4:59] Speaker 3: the tru Reese's trust and they're never going.
[5:01] Speaker 1: To get it back.
[5:05] Speaker 2: This week, a spokesperson for the Hershey Company told us, quote,
[5:08] Speaker 2: the core recipes for our Hershey's chocolate bars and Reese's
[5:11] Speaker 2: Peanut butter cups have not changed. But for a while
[5:14] Speaker 2: now Pratt has had a gut feeling about some of
[5:17] Speaker 2: the products he's been tasting. He isn't formally affiliated with
[5:20] Speaker 2: the company, but as one of the bearers of the
[5:22] Speaker 2: Reese's family name, he has felt compelled to do some
[5:26] Speaker 2: independent research.
[5:28] Speaker 3: Now, have you ever noticed that United States the Reese's
[5:30] Speaker 3: peanut butter cups still saying milk chocolate. Well, in Europe
[5:33] Speaker 3: they don't say that there is no milk chocolate on
[5:36] Speaker 3: the wrapper.
[5:36] Speaker 2: But what can be called chocolate in the US can
[5:39] Speaker 2: necessarily be called chocolate everywhere else. So Reese's candy sold
[5:43] Speaker 2: in the UK, for example, are advertised as a combination
[5:46] Speaker 2: of quote, milk chocolate flavor and smooth, rich peanut butter.
[5:50] Speaker 2: A Hershey spokesperson told us the company is quote continually
[5:53] Speaker 2: reviewing our recipes to meet evolving tastes and preferences end quote.
[5:58] Speaker 2: And there are other products in the company's roster that
[6:01] Speaker 2: lean on formulas with less of those core ingredients. Consumers
[6:04] Speaker 2: have come to love. Aorese's Fast Break candy bar contains
[6:08] Speaker 2: two percent or less of chocolate and skim milk. And
[6:12] Speaker 2: when Brad bought a bag of heart shaped Reeses around
[6:15] Speaker 2: Valentine's Day, he noticed they weren't made of chocolate and
[6:18] Speaker 2: peanut butter, but of quote chocolate candy and peanut butter crem.
[6:25] Speaker 3: I literally had cue bites and I had to spit
[6:27] Speaker 3: it out.
[6:28] Speaker 2: Rad even stopped wearing his Reese's racing jacket. The US
[6:32] Speaker 2: Food and Drug Administration has rules when it comes to
[6:35] Speaker 2: product labeling. To say something is chocolate, at least fifteen
[6:39] Speaker 2: percent of it needs to come from an actual cacao bean.
[6:42] Speaker 2: If the peanut butter isn't at least ninety percent peanuts,
[6:46] Speaker 2: it might go by that peanut butter crem name.
[6:49] Speaker 4: The Nambisco cookies of the chunky cookie version now says
[6:54] Speaker 4: chocolate instead of real chocolate. And the little muffins from
[6:58] Speaker 4: Entemen's that used to have real chocolate chips. Now they
[7:02] Speaker 4: do chocolates and.
[7:02] Speaker 2: Ice cream too. I feel like I've seen this a
[7:04] Speaker 2: lot in ice cream where it's called like frozen.
[7:06] Speaker 4: Rosen dairy dessert. Yes, used to say ice cream on
[7:11] Speaker 4: the package. Now wether says light ice cream or says
[7:16] Speaker 4: frozen dairy dessert because the FDA has, you know, standards
[7:21] Speaker 4: of identity.
[7:22] Speaker 2: Bimbo Bakery's USA, whose parent company owns Entemens, says little
[7:27] Speaker 2: Bites have quote always been made with real chocolate end quote,
[7:31] Speaker 2: and that there was no change to its ingredients. The
[7:33] Speaker 2: company added that after feedback from consumers, they decided to
[7:37] Speaker 2: return to their original labeling, which is now rolling out
[7:40] Speaker 2: to stores. The company that owns Nibisco did not respond
[7:44] Speaker 2: to a request for comment.
[7:46] Speaker 5: Consumers can readily identify that certain things differ.
[7:50] Speaker 2: That is Gail van Seville. She runs a consulting firm
[7:53] Speaker 2: called Sensory Spectrum. Companies approach her when they want to
[7:56] Speaker 2: replace an ingredient in one of their products without making
[7:59] Speaker 2: customer's mad.
[8:01] Speaker 5: For example, the color. They only cared when they were
[8:05] Speaker 5: out of speck, like a big range. Like you couldn't
[8:08] Speaker 5: believe how tolerant they were of the darkness to lightness
[8:13] Speaker 5: of the color. They were like, yeah, still the same cracker.
[8:16] Speaker 1: It's good.
[8:17] Speaker 2: Gail is a trained chemist, so she is a pro
[8:19] Speaker 2: at identifying the notes that a product needs to maintain
[8:22] Speaker 2: its signature taste. At Century Spectrum's tasting lab in New Jersey,
[8:27] Speaker 2: Gail and her team will experiment with flavorings and chemicals,
[8:30] Speaker 2: trying to best replicate a natural ingredient without disturbing the
[8:34] Speaker 2: eater's experience. Certain replacements are harder to nail than others,
[8:39] Speaker 2: like peanuts and chocolates.
[8:41] Speaker 5: You have to find some matching chemicals that are going
[8:45] Speaker 5: to deliver the same type of roasted notes that have
[8:50] Speaker 5: this caramelized character or this what we call chocolate essence,
[8:55] Speaker 5: which has a nuttiness and a whininess to it.
[9:02] Speaker 2: Gail told me. Companies can spend years and millions of
[9:05] Speaker 2: dollars trying to nail their new recipes, and even still
[9:09] Speaker 2: sometimes consumers notice after the break what happens when they do.
[9:26] Speaker 2: As companies have been experimenting with using cheaper ingredients to
[9:30] Speaker 2: cut costs on their products, consumers have noticed and taken action.
[9:35] Speaker 2: Brad Reese, the grandson of Reese's Peanut Buttercup inventor HB.
[9:38] Speaker 2: Reese published an open letter on his LinkedIn addressed to
[9:41] Speaker 2: a manager at Hershey, and that letter got a lot
[9:45] Speaker 2: of attention.
[9:46] Speaker 3: I've literally got hundreds and hundreds of letters emails from
[9:51] Speaker 3: people saying thank you, thank you. I thought I was
[9:54] Speaker 3: going nuts, you know, I thought my case buds were changing.
[9:58] Speaker 3: Now you've confirmed it wasn't me.
[10:00] Speaker 2: And it's not just Brad. For Toronto based social media
[10:03] Speaker 2: marketer Neil Chohan, his crusade started with an ice cream truck.
[10:08] Speaker 1: About three years ago in the summer, picking up a
[10:12] Speaker 1: SpongeBob popsicle. It's one that I had as a kid.
[10:15] Speaker 1: It was my favorite. It had these giant bubblegum eyes
[10:18] Speaker 1: on the front. But I noticed mine was missing the
[10:23] Speaker 1: gumball eyes.
[10:24] Speaker 2: Honest mistake, Neil thought not so.
[10:28] Speaker 1: I thought it was like a manufacturing err or something
[10:30] Speaker 1: like that. But I started digging into it, and it
[10:33] Speaker 1: turns out over years they went from the big bubblegum
[10:37] Speaker 1: eyes to chocolatey chips.
[10:40] Speaker 2: Now that Neil was looking, he started noticing similar product
[10:43] Speaker 2: changes everywhere. It was like he had opened a skimflation
[10:47] Speaker 2: Pandora's box.
[10:49] Speaker 5: It made him so.
[10:49] Speaker 2: Upset he started posting a series on his TikTok account
[10:52] Speaker 2: shaming companies from Oreo filling that he says did not
[10:56] Speaker 2: reach the edge of the cookie to Pringle's chips. He says,
[10:59] Speaker 2: we're getting smaller. A spokesperson for Mars, which owns Springles,
[11:03] Speaker 2: said quote, we have not reduced the size of Pringles
[11:06] Speaker 2: in the US. The dimensions of the crisp may vary
[11:08] Speaker 2: slightly due to manufacturing factors, but we deliver the stated
[11:12] Speaker 2: net weight end quote. The company that owns Oreo did
[11:16] Speaker 2: not reply to a request for comment.
[11:20] Speaker 1: It's something that I think the average American needs to
[11:23] Speaker 1: know about because times are tough and they might be
[11:27] Speaker 1: going crazy wondering why is my money not stretching as
[11:30] Speaker 1: far as it used to. This could be the reason
[11:33] Speaker 1: why does SpongeBob not have eyes exactly?
[11:36] Speaker 2: You know what? That might be the headline nowadays. Neil
[11:38] Speaker 2: gets tips from grocery store and drug store employees who
[11:41] Speaker 2: point out discrepancies they notice too. He says his problem
[11:45] Speaker 2: is not that the companies are changing their products, it's that,
[11:48] Speaker 2: as far as he sees it, they're pretending they have it.
[11:51] Speaker 1: I understand the nuance. There's raw material costs that are
[11:55] Speaker 1: going up, labor is more expensive. I understand why brands
[12:00] Speaker 1: aren't making as much profit as they used to if
[12:02] Speaker 1: they kept everything the same. I get that. Where my
[12:06] Speaker 1: issue lies is the deception behind it.
[12:10] Speaker 2: In academic study published in July in the Journal of
[12:12] Speaker 2: Consumer Research found that consumers are more bothered by skimpflation
[12:17] Speaker 2: than shrink flation, but if companies disclosed the changes they've made,
[12:21] Speaker 2: consumer reactions are significantly reduced. There have been cases of
[12:26] Speaker 2: companies bowing to public pressure and backtracking on their skimflation changes.
[12:31] Speaker 4: Smart Balance margarine used to be sixty four percent oil
[12:38] Speaker 4: and the rest basically water. They changed the formulation and
[12:42] Speaker 4: they lowered the amount of oil content to thirty nine
[12:45] Speaker 4: percent a few years ago, but consumers noticed, and when
[12:51] Speaker 4: you went to the Kanagro website for Smart Balance, there
[12:55] Speaker 4: were literally thousands of consumer complaints. This used to be terrific.
[13:02] Speaker 4: It tasted, you know, buttery tasting and rich, and they
[13:06] Speaker 4: changed back, which was really amazing.
[13:10] Speaker 2: Other than public shaming, Edgar says, there is a more
[13:12] Speaker 2: formal route to force companies hands, and that could come
[13:15] Speaker 2: from the courts. That's starting to move the needle in
[13:18] Speaker 2: some other countries when it comes to shrink flation.
[13:21] Speaker 4: There was just a decision in Germany where Mondola is,
[13:28] Speaker 4: which is, you know, a big consumer products maker. They
[13:31] Speaker 4: have a chocolate bar in Europe that went from one
[13:35] Speaker 4: hundred grams to ninety grams. But the package looked the same.
[13:40] Speaker 4: Of course it had. The netweight was showing. But the
[13:44] Speaker 4: courts said there's an expectation on consumer's parts that if
[13:49] Speaker 4: the product looks the same, it should be the same.
[13:53] Speaker 4: The burdens shouldn't be on the consumer. They have to
[13:56] Speaker 4: check the fine print every time you buy it, and
[14:01] Speaker 4: they basically said that Mondolas in the future has to
[14:06] Speaker 4: put a notice right on the packages for four months
[14:11] Speaker 4: when they lower the contents.
[14:14] Speaker 2: If companies had to advertise these sorts of changes the
[14:17] Speaker 2: same way they market other new and improved products, edgar
[14:20] Speaker 2: thinks it could go a long way.
[14:22] Speaker 4: You always see product manufacturers say when they give you
[14:27] Speaker 4: extra bonus pack, look more, but we ever see in
[14:32] Speaker 4: the United States, look twenty percent less.
[14:37] Speaker 2: I don't any bonus, right, But even the most vigilant
[14:40] Speaker 2: consumer can't catch every change a company might make. While
[14:44] Speaker 2: there are rules food companies have to follow when calling
[14:47] Speaker 2: something chocolate or ice cream or orange juice, many products
[14:50] Speaker 2: don't have those rules. If a company wants to put
[14:53] Speaker 2: less seasoning on its potato chips, use lower quality oil
[14:57] Speaker 2: in its cake recipe, or water down its detergent, the
[15:00] Speaker 2: only hint we might have is our own memory of
[15:03] Speaker 2: how something used to be, how satisfying that crunch was,
[15:07] Speaker 2: or how good a product was at getting stains out
[15:09] Speaker 2: of our shirts. As for the suite of newer Reese's
[15:12] Speaker 2: products using ingredients, Brad hated, it looks like things will
[15:16] Speaker 2: be changing. A spokesperson told us the company will be
[15:19] Speaker 2: quote bringing a small portion of remaining Hershey's and Reese's
[15:22] Speaker 2: products in line with their classic milk and dark chocolate
[15:25] Speaker 2: recipes in twenty twenty seven.
[15:28] Speaker 3: And so now I'm wearing Reeses agay.
[15:31] Speaker 2: That's right. He's back to rocking his Reese's racing jacket
[15:34] Speaker 2: in public. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
[15:43] Speaker 2: I'm Stacey Vannocksmith in for David Gura and Sarah Holder.
[15:46] Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
[15:49] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
[15:52] Speaker 2: dot com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode,
[15:56] Speaker 2: make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
[15:58] Speaker 2: you listen to your podcast helps people find the show,
[16:01] Speaker 2: and thank you for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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