That’s just one way of masking it. Here in Poland someone leaked a conversation with a premium dog food producer who admitted adding some dubious stuff into their food to maintain current price. I just found out had some cans in my storage (this thing lasts for years) and notice the aroma and texture difference to current units is extremely obvious.
I've noticed this for "junk" goods in the US (e.g. candy and chips), but less so for normal groceries (since most things are sold in common sizes, or have distinctive shapes). Is it your impression that shrinkflation is happening uniformly, or is it isolated to particular goods?
I'm starting to see shrinkflation happen with staples such as flour and sugar. Have definitely noticed it now that we're preparing for the holiday bake. The price of butter has remained remarkably stable here in the States. Spices are also getting more expensive. The name brand spices have always been expensive, but now even the store brand spices are soaring in cost.
That's interesting -- in my part of the US flour and sugar have been pretty consistent, but butter is much more expensive (like $6-7/lb) when it isn't on sale.
I bake a lot, haven't noticed flour or sugar getting any smaller? They're the same size bags as they always are
I'm starting to see 3.5 lb bags of flour showing up. By no means universal, but I'm starting to see them and I've never seen them before. I have family in all different areas of the country and we're seeing dramatic differences in food costs between regions that we've never seen before. But it's not across the board. Like you say, butter has gotten quite expensive where you are - but it hasn't here.
More stores are selling 4 or 3lb flour bags vs prior 5.