The internet has been popping off about Shrinkflation for months now, and for good reason. With companies thinking they can get away with offering us less while we pay more, people are quick to call it out when they feel ripped off. Wouldn’t you be angry, too? One man in Tennessee, for example, was shopping at Walmart for shrimp. As an experiment, he weighed the bag of shrimp against the label weight. Now he’s alleging that Walmart is engaging in a trick called “glazing.”
TikToker James (James_wrigg/TikTok) shows a bag of frozen Great Value shrimp from Walmart to his audience. He says you can’t see through the shrimp because of the coating of “sodium tripolyphosphate.” Layers of ice are added to the shrimp, and the sodium tripolyphosphate is used to retain moisture (which Great Value also states on the packaging). Add enough layers, and you could meaningfully increase a product’s weight without actually giving more to your customers. Or as James put it: “It’s weight fraud and they’re ripping you off.”
To demonstrate, James buys a bag and weighs it at home (before it’s opened). Once it’s thawed, James notes the weight (including the bag) as 2.54 lbs. Once opened, strained, dried, and the bag removed, James weighs it again. But before he does that, he shows that 200ml was drained from the bag. That’s nearly an entire cup, and it was almost 7 ounces.
With the shrimp patted dry, James weighs the shrimp. At the same time, he counts them, too. According to the packaging, James should have about 31 to 40 shrimp per pound, so 62 to 80 (which is also on the packaging). “That was only 59,” James exclaimed, “So they shorted us on shrimp. You see what’s going on? Glaze water.”
The weight of the shrimp? It came out to 1 lbs and 12.6 ounces. “So, what are you really getting? Ripped off,” James says, before ending his TikTok video.
Naturally, people were pretty unhappy with the results of James’s experiment. Several shared that these tactics are why they no longer shop at Walmart. Others took it further.
“That’s why billionaires make so much money,” stated one commenter.
“I know it’s hard not to shop at Walmart, especially in this economy. But, I try to shop local mom and pop first. You just proved it’s better to buy from the local seafood market,” another commenter said.
One commenter wasn’t as mortified and argued it was “only off 4oz,” but it was quickly pointed out that shrimp also shrink. Although that’s how all meat works, when you buy 2 lbs of shrimp, you should get 2 lbs of shrimp.
