Alice in Groceryland

Just poised to bite into a delicious Oreo cookie, fresh from the box, my husband made one of his signature incredulous faces and said:

"Is it me, or are these Oreos smaller than they used to be?"

"Let's see," I said, grabbing a cookie. I turned it from side to side, feeling the weight and heft in my hand. Strange, but it seemed to be shrinking before my eyes. "It IS smaller! Hard to see it, but I can feel it!"

We exchanged that look we get when the satellite service reacts to the wind, breaking the picture into puzzle pieces. It's infuriating to pay for goods and services, only to realize you're not actually getting them. We don't like that. Well, who does?

"Rip off!" we both snarl.

"I want my real Oreos!" he says.

"Yes, d****t!" I agree.

Glowering like second-graders having to skip recess, we continue slowly munching and they're just as mortally delicious as ever, no matter the size. But I must say in the case of Oreos, size DOES matter, as the price has remained the same.

Next day in the cereal aisle, I shake a box of Cheerios. It IS smaller! Infinitesimally less weighty, but I NEED a box of toasty-oat goodness, so I drop it, shaking my head and sneering, into the cart alongside smaller OTHER items, such as ice cream, bread and even--yes, even MILK!

"'Got milk,'" indeed! "Not as much as we used to get!" I want to say.

Enraged shopper, Edgar Dvorsky, started Mouseprint.org when he noticed his groceries were actually shrinking.

"The companies have found a sneaky way to pass on a price increase by taking out some of the content from the package, but making the package look the same size," he explains on Consumer Watch.

But I also notice that this report was made in 2008, and little was reported on the "Mystery of the Shrinking Products" since then. Curiouser and CURIOUSER!

Now I'm busily inspecting jars of peanut butter. Really, how can we call ourselves Americans if we goof around with the size of a jar of peanut butter? Come ON! It's for the kids. (Who'm I kidding? Adults like it too. With Oreos, between the chocolate and the marshmallow on S'mores, in milkshakes. Drooling, I digress.)

Here's Skippy Peanut Butter. How much more American could a peanut butter get? Moms love Skippy, right? I'm holding the jar and it seems the same as before, but then my eyes sort of waver around the edges.

"To the untrained eye," writes Dvorsky, "there's no real difference between the old jar and the new jar. But if you put to two side by side and look closely, you'll see there are actually two fewer ounces in the new Skippy jar than the old. Most people don't check the net weight of a product to make sure it hasn't been reduced from the last time you purchased it." OH THE NET WEIGHT! THAT is the secret.

Do not tell me the companies are saving money by skimping on the products, while sticking it to our grocery bills all the while. This is the land of the free, for heaven's sake.

But. Read on, if you dare. This is not for the faint-hearted, Alice. And I don't see Johnny Depp in green make-up anywhere.

"The size of a box of Applejacks cereal has gone from 11 ounces to 8.7 ounces, and a jar of Hellmann's Mayonnaise has shrunk from 32 ounces to 30," says the report. Applejacks! Hellmann's! Cheerios! Oreos! What has happened to the universe? Has the world gone mad?

"Most people can't tell the difference between the old and the new except when they're side by side," Dvorsky explained. "And even when they're side by side you can't tell. . . ."

I go tearing out of the grocery store and take my laptop to Starbucks. (Is this jumbo mochaccino smaller than the last time? Who remembers how many ounces from purchase to purchase? I'll know if I get less jittery.)

Googling "shrinking products," I'm aghast. So many links; so little time! Apparently the trend started when the economy began to flag. To quote Marlon Brando, "The horror! The horror!" It's not limited to packaged foods! Drinks, bath soaps, shampoos, toilet paper. . . TOILET PAPER?

Hey, that's going too far. One thing we have always been able to count on to distinguish the U.S.A. from slightly less-scrupulous countries is our triple-ply cottony quilted toilet paper. Sighing as if life as we know it is over for good, I sip some mochaccino and read on.

Dan Howard, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University, says this is a company's way of instituting a price increase without actually raising the price. (Without its being noticed, that is.)

"Price is much more visible," Howard says. "Consumers notice the price before they turn the box over or the jar over and say 'Gee, I'm actually getting fewer ounces of what I just bought.'" Ohhh. . . I feel as if I'm coming out of some deep dark dream, with remnants of conspiracy plots dancing in my head.

I understand now! This way, in other words, the food companies can cheat us behind our backs. I lie back in my uncomfortable Starbuck's club chair. (Do they make them uncomfy so we'll stay for less time, so they can sell more coffee?) Incoherent, I lapse into nursery rhymes.

"Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater!" (Uh-oh. Better check those ounces in the pumpkin can before Thanksgiving!) "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" (Wonder if a size 14 still IS a size 14?). . . so. . . wait just a minute here.

If the size of packaged foods is SMALLER than usual, then why is the population still gaining weight? I mean per capita, we're porkers, let's face it. Wouldn't you think, if we're getting fewer Cheerios, then we'd know we have to lessen the portions? Suddenly nothing makes sense at all!

What time is it? What day is it? Where am I? Everything is slowly turning into polka-dots and stripes in pink and yellow and blue! Oh, it's beautiful here! Such flowers! I smell cookies baking and fresh milk for tea time! (Excuse me. I seem to have disappeared down the Rabbit Hole.)