It seems like all packaged foods do this now

Krudler@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 807 points –

I bought 175 g pack of salami which had 162 g of salami as well.

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It's a 2% difference. The cutting and packaging is done (most probably) by machines. I have clinically diagnosed OCD, and I wouldn't care about 8g of missing pasta... How much do you leave on the plate/in the pot/throw away? :)

Otoh, hitting exactly 410g (assuming the scale is calibrated, and you have the same temperature, air moisture and altitude as the factory), is very difficult. They could adjust their machines so the variation hangs a bit more towards the customer, but for them, 2% x millions of boxes = profit.

Most of our packaging machines require < 1%, target <0.5% variance (both ways). Honestly in practice, over a whole batch the total variance is extremely tiny.

Add to this story the accuracy of a household, not-calibrated scale? Yeah I'd say this seems OK.

What do you make?

Tolerances for food items depend a lot on item size, shape, and irregularity.

I mean.. that's a good point. I only make bulk materials, like 1 ton supersaks, and we tend to OVERfill so customers don't complain, with the target still being close to zero for a whole batch.

This really isn't a big deal, the customer paid 2% less off this specific box. Oh.

This isn't a big deal, the customer paid 2% less than the calculated total for their entire order at checkout and only had to say "me shorting this transaction is just a statistical probability and you should view it as the cost of doing business with me." Oh.

This isn't a big deal, the customer gets massive subsidies from the government while the poor manufacturers have to pay stupid worker safety fees and unfair payroll during times of extreme economic 'fortune'. Oh.