hydroguaiaretic acid, butylated hydroxytoluene, and other chemical names for food additives and preservatives.

The Michigan official outlined practices discovered by the state's investigational shoppers. They included:

• A roll-on deodorant in a box twice the size required for the product which was labeled, "giant 1% fl. oz."

• Canned pork and beans very heavy on the beans and equally light on the pork, although the label gave reason to expect a generous helping of the meat. • An instant dry milk labeled, "Faster than instant."

Hand or bath soaps, labeled
"bath size," with many varia-
tions of size and no indication
of weight.

Two spray hair preparations
each containing 15 fluid ounces.
One was marked "giant $2.25
value reduced to 98 cents"; the
other was
$1.09."

marked "special

Banana fingers and rolls without any listing of bananas or banana puree in the printed ingredients.

• Cheese "Twirlees" not marked cheese flavored although the only trace of cheese was in the flavor.

Chocolate peppermint cookies with the contents revealing artificial flavoring and failing to mention peppermint.

• An “Almonette" cookie without almonds although cashews were used.

Pineapple filled oatmeal cookies without filling and without pineapple.

• Strawberry gelatin desert without strawberries, although there was artificial flavoring and bits of other fruits.

The witness testified that in many cases printed matter is deliberately made difficult to read by failure to provide contrast between type and background color.

"We find considerable difficulty," he said "with labels on the aluminum foil type wrappers and on pliofilm bags. Have you ever tried to read pale yellow printing on such wrappers?" He added that: informational statements usually are not displayed upon the side of the container facing the customer; type often is microscopic in size; minor matters are stressed in descriptions; insufficient room is provided for adequate labeling.

Such are the wonders of modern chemistry that sometimes there's no chicken at all in chicken soup. F. J. Schlink of Consumers' Research described one such case to the Hart Subcommittee.

The product, Clear Chicken Instant Soup, had common salt as its chief ingredient. Next by weight was sugar (dextrose). Third was monosodium gluti

nate, "a material much used to

REVERSE COMPETITION

tinguished flavors of many canned and processed foods." In lesser degree, were dehydrated onions, chicken fat with starch, various amounts of dehydrated vegetables, spices, and three chemical additives. Citric acid in propylene was added "to improve stability." Translated, this meant simply that artificial preservatives had been used.

There are some 3,000 chemical food additives and preservatives, some of dubious value. Most consumers have no way of determining whether an additive adds anything or whether a preservative is harmful in specific circumstances. The consumer knows only that the requirements of the Pure Food and Drug Act are supposed to have been met. Beyond this, the use of chemical names on

reverse in the supermarkets to the disadvantage of the more scrupulous food processor. Products without food preservatives tend to become stale or unpalatable long before those containing such additives. The supermarket operator is interested in clearing out his shelves through sales. The more he has to throw away, the less the profit.

Since the consumer usually doesn't read labels or is unable to understand their meaning, the merchandiser buys accordingly. He is far more interested in durability than in purity. Preservatives dangerous or harmlessmean a longer lasting product and a better chance for sales. The manufacturer sometimes must choose between adulteration or bankruptcy.

If competition results in artificial flavoring, color additives, and preservatives, it also results in a plethora of sizes, shapes and weights. The giant size has come to mean small; super-giant means regular, and king-size economy means large. Often enough, the biggest box gives smallest value.

King size may be shaped to look bigger but contains less for the money. The supermarket deals with optical illusion, if not with magic mirrors. In part, this results from the fight for space on store shelves. The contract between merchandiser and packager usually requires the former to display a standard number of the latter's brand. Since the package is the salesman, the object is to get as big a display as possible and overshadow all others.

"Sizes and shapes, colors and materials, pictures and symbols are intended to carry a message to the consumer-buyer, a persuasive message; there is evidence that in many cases the message has the 'capacity to mislead,' even to deceive. That situation is getting worse as the 'revolution' develops

.," Dr.Persia Campbell, chairman of the Economic Department of New York's Queens College, said during Senate subcommittee hearings.

The supermarket thrives on the unplanned purchase, and the manager likes nothing better than a male buyer who is far more ready to buy on impulse than his more budget-conscious wife. The trap is display heaped upon display, until the very number of products creates a buy-with-abandon psychol

ogy. The technique works, as almost every consumer has learned to his sorrow. That's why stores sometimes carry loss leaders to get the customer inside. As Marya Mannes, New York writer and housewife told the subcommittee, the word "consumer" these days is sometimes spelled "s-u-c-k-e-r."

Surveys show that about 70 percent of supermarket sales are unplanned. Many are the result of impulse buying, the colorful wrapper says not to miss the big bargain so we buy and buy. A closer look when it's too late may show that there wasn't any bargain at all even with the "full" two cents off.

A 1959 Dupont study made for supermarkets showed what is at stake for the merchandiser. It urged colorful displays of a massive number of items. It reported an eight percent increase in average customer purchases over 1954 in the number of items bought and credited the rise partly to "multiple purchases [more than one package of the same item] and new supermarket items and departments.

"Many of the new items added by supers during the past five years are higher-profit products. Good examples are specialty nonfood items and gourmet foods which mean to the supermarket operator a profit double or more for many items he sells."

"The new, higher-profit items

combined with the supermarket's regular lines afford the customer a greater selection. This helps to account for the fact that she is now spending an average of 27 minutes per shopping trip in the store as compared to less than 18 minutes five years ago and buying more merchandise," the Dupont study reported.

THIRTY PERCENT

FOOD purchases account for about 30 percent of total consumer expenditures, and the proportion is higher for lower income groups. Consumers have been the victims of a hidden inflation that robs millions from the food budget. A pound isn't a pound anymore. More often than not, yesterday's pound container has given odd amount. way to 15 ounces or some other The half pound,

likewise, has given way to seven ounces or less. The same is true

of the quart or the pint. Such is the state of affairs that packagers now offer a bargain of a "jumbo full pound" and a "giant halfquart."

Something, indeed, has gone out of American life. As Marya Mannes has commented, "Without trust, a civilized society cannot endure. When the people who are too smart to be good fool the people who are too good to be smart, then society begins to crumble." The New York writer noted that this is happening now. She

stressed that malpractice must be stopped before "our integrity as Americans is chiseled away as fast as our dollars are."

The consumer looks at the apparent size, trusting to his or her eyes to guide the purchase. But the tall package often is thinner or contains more air. When all is said and done, the consumer may pay more per ounce for the jumbo economy size. Weights commonly are given in fractional amountsseven and three-quarters ounces even sounds like more than onehalf pound net weight.

"An endless variety of packaged rice or corn flakes or dried beans stock the grocery shelves," Dr. Persia Campbell noted in her Hart subcommittee testimony. "The containers may all be uniform in size but vary widely in content. One box may contain 1534 ounces for 47 cents while the adjacent box will have 162 ounces for 53 cents. Which is the better buy?"

So, only a half-ounce is missing from the liquid detergent bottle that you thought contained a full eight fluid ounces. Or there's just one-half ounce less of preparation in that newly designed jar of baby food. Or, perhaps, there's only one ounce less in the box of cereal or four ounces less than before in the new box of detergent.

It's only pennies, but how they mount up into dollars. Dr. Colston Warne, head of Consumers

Union, is an expert on the subject. He had this to say before the Hart subcommittee:

"The per-capita consumption of grain products in the United States is 148 pounds per year. Multiply that by the total population and our annual domestic consumption of grain products amounts, roughly, to more than 30 billion pounds a year. One ounce taken from each of those pounds provides a total of 1.9 billion pounds-a husky haul."

Dr. Warne has found the consumer to be king in name only. He has reported that the consumer "is all too often fooled about the quality, quantity and prices of the goods he purchases; that too often his buying power is frittered away by questionable selling practices, not the least of which is deceptive packaging."

Consumers Union has reported