The 'mystery' of shrinking chocolate bars

The FT looks at the 'mystery' of shrinking chocolate bars...

After high-profile cases with the likes of newly gappy Toblerones, the UK stats office says that over 2,500 products were cut in size between January 2012 and June 2017, far outweighing the number of items that were boosted. The trend is most pronounced in sugary treats, where changing pack sizes have contributed 1.22 percentage points to their rate of inflation since 2012, the ONS says.

Manufacturers tend to blame price increases on higher costs for raw materials, but the ONS points out that sugar prices are around the lowest since records began in 1991, while cocoa prices have also tanked.

The FT also notes that the ONS discounts Brexit as the reason because:

'Our analysis doesn’t show a noticeable change following the referendum that would point towards a Brexit effect. Furthermore, others had been observing these shrinking pack sizes long before the EU referendum, and several manufacturers have denied that this is a major factor.'

Remarkably, both the ONS and the FT treat this as a genuine mystery rather than something that can be easily explained by the government sugar reduction scheme. There is plenty of evidence available in Public Health England documents such as Sugar reduction and wider reformulation: stakeholder engagement, Sugar reduction and wider reformulation meetings: November 2016, and Sugar reduction: Achieving the 20% that can explain why confectionery is shrinking.

As I said a couple of months ago:

The bottom line is that most people prefer the taste of sugar to that of artificial sweeteners, and many of the products in the firing line are inherently sweet. Products such as chocolate, confectionery and jam are not going to be magically reformulated with sweeteners. There is a dawning realisation at Public Health England that reducing portion sizes or having a calorie cap (which amount to much the same thing) are the only viable options.

While the achievement of the 20% reduction by 2020 is the overall focus of the programme, smaller gradual reductions can provide a useful contribution to reducing sugar and calorie consumption, and ultimately towards achieving the overall goal. This applies particularly in those products where sugar reduction per 100g can be more difficult, for example, in chocolate confectionery. Where this is the case, businesses are expected to employ additional mechanisms, such as reducing portion size, to achieve the total 20% reduction.

Here is what Public Health England are telling manufacturers:

Mystery solved.