Your favourite chocolate bars are shrinking

It's not your imagination: chocolate bars have been shrinking - in some cases by almost a third. Things always seem smaller as we grow. However, over the years, some chocolate bars really have shrunk. Wagon Wheels, for example, were never really the size of your head, but have shrunk - from 79mm to 74mm.

A survey by kitchen firm Appliance City found that 80% of us suspect our chocolate bars are shrinking, and they're right, some of them have seen alarming changes.

Before your very eyes...

The Yorkie Bar has changed size a number of times. It peaked at 70g in the 2000s and today weighs 46g - it has one fewer chunks too. The Mars Bar actually started life even lighter than it is now. It got much heavier in the 1990s, and has since dropped 28% of its weight. The Twix, meanwhile, started life in the 1980s at 60g and currently weighs 50g.

This news will come as no surprise to those who have kept their eye on shrinking chocolate over recent years. As we reported in July, this Christmas will be yet another when tins of chocolate get lighter. A tin of Roses will be down from 780g last year to 730g this year. Compare that to back in 2011 when a tin weighed an impressive 975g. Meanwhile this year, a tin of Heroes will drop from 780g to 685g - losing about 11 chocolates. Both will still cost around £9.

Why?

The chocolate companies are blaming the price of cocoa, which has seen global demand rocket as China has developed a taste for dark chocolate - which is particularly coco-intensive. Meanwhile supply has been hit by drought followed by flooding.

There has also been an outbreak of fungus in Ghana (the second largest cocoa exporter in the world), which has seen production fall. It means the price of producing chocolate has almost doubled over the last decade, and is set to rise further.

Because it's a discretionary spend, manufacturers don't want to raise the price too much, so they have shrunk the bars and tins instead to keep them within reach.

Of course, the chocolate companies could choose to make smaller profits, but that's not the sort of thing that global markets support, so instead the consumer will bear the brunt of price increases,

Manufacturers have tried to keep innovating to convince us we aren't just paying the same and receiving less. Roses, for example, is introducing an Almond Caramel Bite this year, while Heros is adding Wispas.

However, when your tin of chocolates has shrunk by a quarter, and your Mars Bar is almost a third lighter, a couple of new chocolates aren't going to keep us sweet.

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