Shrinkflation is corporate gaslighting - manufacturers must stop insulting us

Often in life we settle for the next best thing because the real deal isn't available to us. The Bootleg Beatles, for example, or Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister (boom, boom! Have I Got News For You, here I come). Now we can add chocolate to that growing list. Cocoa prices have rocketed to a 45-year high, and major manufacturers have decided to cut corners. Lunchbox favourites Penguin and Club bars are no longer legally chocolate biscuits because now they have more palm and shea oil than cocoa. "If you like a lot of chocolate-flavoured coating on your biscuit, join our Club," doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

In fact, it triggered a traumatic flashback to my childhood - excitedly opening an advent calendar window, only to find a weird, crumbly square of "chocolate" that definitely wasn't Dairy Milk cos mum got it down Wood Green market for a bargain price. So-called "shrinkflation" is to blame. Creeping in by stealth, disguised as new, improved recipes and revamped packaging. It's a kind of corporate gaslighting.

Products incrementally shrink, cheaper ingredients are quietly introduced, while prices stay the same or even creep up.

It's like that bit in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland when she has a nibble on the cake marked "Eat Me" and becomes a giant, but in incredibly slow motion... (still with me?)

A recent supermarket study flagged two particularly egregious cases: Sainsbury's Scottish Oats shrunk from 1kg to 500g while the price jumped from £1.25 to £2.10; and Cadbury multi-packs of Freddo dropped from five bars to four yet still priced at £1.40.

Compare that to my student days when the Tesco Value range sold tins of baked beans for 3p and loaves of bread for 7p. You could, technically, feed yourself for a week for less than a fiver and spend the rest on fags and booze. Every little helps...

Supermarkets could do far more to flag products that have had a shrinkflation makeover but why would they? There's no incentive to shout about less-for-more. While manufacturers insist they have customers' interests at heart, offering the best value possible in the tricky financial climate.

Call it what you like, just don't insult us by pretending smaller packs, higher prices and cheaper ingredients are somehow for our benefit. That really is through-the-looking-glass logic.

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It's possible the greetings card industry has peaked. Moonpig 's launched a special corporate service providing motivational workplace morale boosters in greeting card form.

A survey found more than half of employees don't feel valued. One in five haven't had their birthday acknowledged at work and a third have never had a work anniversary noted.

After a successful pilot, Moonpig for Business is going live and, apparently, parts of the civil service have already signed on.

If Moonpig is scouting for ideas, I have a few for them: "Let's touch base" atop an image of Paul McCartney with his Hofner guitar giving a thumbs-up. Or "Thanks for the memo - I'll totally action it", with a sweaty Jason Statham in a string vest crashing through an office window. And for HR emergencies, a "Whoops, I didn't realise you can't use that word any more" card - much cheaper than a tribunal.

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A grumpy Brazilian chef asked to curate a vegan banquet for Prince William's Earthshot awards has refused. Saulo Jennings was planning traditional pirarucu - a huge fish found in the Amazon - in Rio de Janeiro next month, and balked at the plant-based brief.

"It's like asking Iron Maiden to play jazz," came his pompous reply. Next time someone asks me to do something I don't want to, I will adopt his vibe: "Sorry, that's like asking Adele to do Eurovision."