"Hocus, pocus, dominocus!" was the mantra of amateur magicians when I was a kid.
How appropriate, then, is the brand name "Domino," which has made a pound of sugar disappear?
We don't buy a whole lot of sugar for our house. We don't use it on cereal, or in coffee, and only once or twice a year do we make any kind of cookies or batter breads. So, a bag can last a year or more.
Nevertheless, when I picked up this bag at the store this weekend, I could tell from the feel of it that something was wrong - it was too compact, smaller and lighter than I remembered. The package tells the story: four pounds, not five.
Motivation is everything. I'd like to think that the sugar lobby is trying to help people cut back on a product that's bad for them by giving them less of it. HA HA HA. No, I'm pretty sure this is the usual manufacturer's trick of reducing the package size rather than forcing consumers to face the horror of a discernible price increase on the supermarket shelf. Like those amateur magicians, Domino hopes to distract our attention from what's really going on. We're all used to it.
But it seems a particularly ridiculous effort with a product like sugar, a basic commodity of relatively low price (this package cost 2.99). Really, now, how many people even look at the price before they buy it, and how many who look would notice or care, if this package cost 3.49 instead of 2.99? Wait a couple of years, and we'll see the 5-pound package on the shelf, "NEW! 20% more!", with a price of about 4.99.
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