Katie Couric's notebook: Food prices
Next time you grab an item off the supermarket shelf, look closely. You may be getting fewer bites for your buck. As the cost of raw goods has soared, some food-makers have opted to shrink the sizes of familiar products rather than boost their prices.
With the cost of corn on the rise, for instance, you'll now find 20 percent fewer Doritos in each bag than you did in 2009. That 64-ounce carton of Tropicana orange juice has been squeezed down to 59 ounces.
Food makers are clearly hoping consumers won't notice that they're getting less for their money. Some even put a positive spin on it by promoting greener packages. Yes, they use less plastic or cardboard, but mostly because they're smaller.
Many companies predict even higher food costs in the months ahead. So, we may see more of these trimmed-down products - something we might not mind so much if the prices were shrinking, too.
That's a page from my notebook.
I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.