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Aux ,

Plenty of people have already explained that consumer scales show bullshit. But there's another reason why your weight is not the same as producer's weight.

You see, kilograms are a unit of measure of mass, not weight. Weight is measured in Newtons. And 1kg = 1 * g Newtons. But here's the catch - g is not constant in real life. It changes from 9.7639 to 9.8337 depending on your location. That's almost 1% of variance.

What that means is that if you take your scales and your pasta and go on a worldwide trip, then you will see different weight in different locations.

Quexotic ,

They all have legally allowed margins of error.they use it to their full advantage.

Record profits is just code for "the successful fleecing of the 99%"... It has a better ring to it.

smb ,

see, capitalism works!

  1. sell 10million packages each with missing 2% of contents.
  2. sell those 200000 extra packages with the contens you "saved" (no, not 204000 with again missing 2%, see below why)
  3. do not pay taxes on extra packages you sold as you can "proof" you sold all 10million paying those taxes.
  4. receive 200000 * price of package as personal taxfree extra income.
  5. write that one guy who complained about missing 8grams of pasta a sorry letter
  6. complain about time loss and costs writing a single sorry letter and pay paper and stamp out of "marketing" campaigns budget
  7. complain about the world not trusting companies
  8. complain about people using badly adjusted scales
  9. complain about someone selling none-genuine products on market with your logo faked.
  10. assume that those packages with missing contents could be just those fake products.

done a full circle.

but... kitchen scales are really bad.
most other scales as well.
i tried to find (electronic) scales that are actually precise:

for low weights i ended up with a scale with 0.01 gram precison, but it could only measure a bit more than 100grams (and also included a 100gr calibration weight)

for higher weigths i only found a scale for post offices measuring packages. the only thing the vendor "really" promised was that multiple times measuring the same thing would be showing the same weight (nope the best "affordable" scale on the market here did not promise to measure correctly, just to measure over and over the same...)

i guess the options for accurate measuring of more than 100gr are:

  • old style mechanical scales daily adjusted
  • high priced industry/laboratory scales with warranties

fun fact:

after i bought that 0.01gr precicion scale, amazon showed me small plastic clip bags with green leaf signs on it as "recommended" products for month, while i used the scale to mix just small amounts of 2-component epoxy resin in projects.

SexyTimeSasquatch ,

Yes, it seems that way because your kitchen scale is faulty and measuring everything a bit on the light side.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Or it was measured differently. They could have stacked ten of them on a scale at once while you are stacking one at a time.

Or it was measured differently and they used the legally allowed error bars.

Or the kitchen scale was off.

Or there is some missing mass from say dust.

Or they were assholes and knew they could get away with it.

Lots going on and it would be hard to debug.

Amehvafan ,

Nah, it's probably correct. I work in food industry and it's pretty much never EXACTLY right. It's always a few grams over or under, and if the bosses get to choose they choose to have it be under.

NaoPb ,

This is why in the EU they need to display net weight.

JStenoien ,

No shit Sherlock, that's what it is in the US as well. This is just OP being a dumbass and assuming a conspiracy instead of understanding his scale just sucks.

NaoPb ,

I'm not from the US. I only got that later from reading the comments.

But yeah I agree it sucks.

TheBig2023Meltdown ,

You've bought spaghetti Kelly, not cocaine.

speaker_hat ,

It's just looks like a spaghetti...

postmateDumbass ,

Put it in water, then you know if you have spaghetti or just fucked up.

ILikeBoobies ,

It can be saved, add baking soda and you will have ready rock

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Net Weight vs Gross Weight

Xcf456 ,

Aren't the figures on the package meant to be net weight though?

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

I believe so too.
But maybe that's not a legal requirement everywhere.
From the packagings I remember, wherever the package weight is significant, "Net Weight" is explicitly stated.
So, when I see it not written, I don't assume.

TwoCubed ,

The real crime here is that you bought Barilla instead of DeCecco.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

De Cecco, Garofalo, or Voiello.

If you have to get Barilla, at least get their fancier one (Al Bronzo or at least Collezione).

Numhold ,

When did shrinkflation become acceptable for pasta? Even though it‘s been legal for a while to sell more individual package sizes, I would never accept a package of pasta that doesn‘t say 500g or more on it.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I am half tempted to buy a pasta making machine. The more and more food I make myself the angrier I get at the food production world.

A dumbass like me shouldn't be able to make better tasting products for lower cost than food factories.

phx ,

That brings up a question, is that 410g required to be just the edible product or could it include the weight of the packaging?

CanadaPlus ,

There's an allowed margin of error, too. If they happen to have gram-level precision, but have 10g leeway for a given product, this might be a good way to save scrape out a bit more margin.

ede1998 ,

That would be easy to prevent though with an additional requirement: The average weight over N products must be within X% of the specified weight. This way the producer cannot intentionally underfill.

platypus_plumba ,

I was thinking that. Good solution. I'm not sure what would prevent them from lying though. The only way to know would be to unpack a whole batch of their products.

CanadaPlus ,

If they straight up lie, they're liable for a big fine (or maybe worse, if they're really shameless about it), and buying a few things to weigh isn't that impractical. IIRC a chip company in Canada got caught a bit ago skimping, starting with someone who weighed a bag at home.

nooeh ,

Do you know how expensive that would be for a regulatory agency to test N samples from every food product.

CanadaPlus ,

That's literally what they do. If you increase the number of samples, that obviously increases costs correspondingly. If it's still a tiny sliver of everything produced it's practical, though.

CanadaPlus ,

Now we're doing statistics.

Sure, and you could even have many maximum sample variances prescribed in law for different N. Hell, you could even specify it in the form of a mathematical relation, and say that the sample mean has to limit to the nominal amount regardless of sample pattern. At that point, manufacturers would be forced to be at least as fair as regulators could measure, without assuming anything about how accurate their bag filling machines are or aren't.

That's more complicated, though, and I'm guessing they wrote in what seemed reasonable and good enough at the time. Just tightening up the percentage inaccuracy allowed for manufacture at scale to reflect technology might be good enough again, whenever they revisit these laws.

HessiaNerd ,

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.7

It is required to be the contents. There is very little leeway for error. The FDA can and will shut your whole company down for labeling issues.

NaoPb ,

Nice, I did not know about this.

Coreidan ,

Get a better scale first

Perhapsjustsniffit ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    Tier1BuildABear ,
    @Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world avatar

    Right, like I love how he's showing something falsely advertised, and these idiots are like, "no, it was the OTHER thing that was falsely advertised that's the problem!", like it can't possibly be TWO shitty products.

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