Áilín Quinlan: I went to pick up something easy for dinner...but paused

If you’re feeling €20 is the new €10, or €10 is the new fiver when it comes to food shopping in this country, read on.

Mid to late afternoon, towards the end of a long journey on stormy winter roads with delays to the point of starvation I decide to pick up something easy for the dinner.

I stop off at a well-known supermarket to get some of that ready-to-go chicken stir fry mix which I’d bought on a few previous occasions, though not for a good while now, maybe nine months to a year.

I’d always found it to be basic but good, generously portioned and reasonably priced.

However, the last time I bought this stir fry was a long, long time before RTÉ reported (last month) that we now need nearly €109 to buy the same things we’d have purchased for €100 in 2022.

I last bought it a long time before October when inflation in the price of groceries climbed to 6.5%.

I’d last purchased this mix many months before last June, when the national broadcaster ran a piece explaining why grocery prices have shot up by an eye-watering 36% in the last four years – labour costs, commercial rates, rents, insurance, electricity, heating, the balance of supply and demand being some of the reasons given.

Now, back to last week, when, we’ll say, that for the first time in up to 12 months, I pick up this aluminium container of supermarket-brand chicken stir fry mix.

I start to head towards the cash registers, but something gives me pause.

Something’s different.

I look more carefully at the container. I shake it gently. I tilt the box. The contents slide easily, so easily, far down, all the way to the very end of the box, leaving loads of empty space.

I assume there’s been a mistake and pick up another container. Then another. Alas, there’s no mistake.

Each one contains a noticeably small portion of a stir fry, which now seems to be primarily bits of chicken and a few carrot shavings in some kind of sauce.

There’s no red or green or yellow pepper visible and no onion that I can see, which, as I remember with a fair degree of certainty, used to be included.

As I also recall it, previously those same containers had held enough stir fry for two. I had usually bought a second container of the mix, but purely to allow for second helpings and tomorrow’s lunch.

Now, though, I peer more closely.

As far as I can establish, there seems to be barely enough of the mix in the box for one small portion.

Also, the price definitely seems higher. I don’t remember paying €7 a box for this.

What I remember is paying something more like €5.99 for one generously loaded box, or else two-for-€10 with far more chicken stir fry involved than I was looking at now.

Am I misremembering?

Puzzled, I turn the container around to see how much it weighs.

There’s no information about the weight.

Funny, I think, how these days I always seem to be paying significantly more money for significantly less product.

Never before have I given thought to the weight of this container of chicken stir fry. Because, of course, whenever I bought it in the past there was always plenty in it.

Something had changed.

Just for devilment, I bring the box with its bits of chicken and carrot shavings (you could not justify it with the title of stir fry) to the counter and ask an assistant to weigh it for me.

He puts it on the scales and informs me that it weighs 410 grams, which is about fourteen and a half ounces.

I have no doubt that the man was telling the truth.

All the same, I pause.

“Ah, there’s a lot of chicken in it,” he said, sensing my surprise and disapproval.

I shake the box gently and the contents effortlessly slide down again to the farthest corner.

“No, there isn’t,” I comment expressionlessly, thinking that this pretence at a stir fry - which was basically going to end up as no more than a few strips of fried chicken - is costing around €1.70 per 100g.

Now, as even the dogs on the street know, the most basic chicken stir fry will contain at least a few visible and relatively inexpensive, vegetables, examples being onions, garlic, mushrooms, peppers, carrots, broccoli, etc, not to mention spices like chilli and ginger, and a herb such as coriander.

Belatedly, the penny drops.

If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck, then it most likely is a duck.

Instinct was shouting that I was paying noticeably more for noticeably less of a mixture which bore only the remotest relation to a stir fry.

Was this some form of shrinkflation?

The only thing is, I ponder, is that shrinkflation is supposed to be what happens when the size of a product reduces while the price remains the same.

The problem here was that this product had – to my recollection anyway – noticeably reduced in both quality and size, while the cost had noticeably increased.

I return the €7 aluminium container of this fools’ food to its place on the shelf.

Seven euros for a few raw chicken slices and a bit of shaved carrot in a teaspoon of cheap sauce.

Do they think we’re fools?