https://youtube.com/shorts/rFWskJ2-GJc?si=BHP6YssIvQAF4uS6
This video is a perfect example of deception and Shrinkflation but probably mostly deception.
The sticker on the ham said it was 5.34 pounds. The actual weight when weighed on the scale someone took was 2.25 pounds, which is not an insignificant amount of weight.
This ham comes from Walmart's Kentucky Legend brand. That very fact makes the case harder to dismiss as something made up on the Internet, although I'm sure some will still try.
The reason this is more of an issue to me than the fact that people paid double the amount they were supposed to pay is that the person who found this out said it took them only two minutes. That means that after spending only two minutes in the meat area, this person had already found out that they couldn't trust the labels on the hams. If this is true, then how many other people who shopped at that store paid for basically ghost hams?
I don't know if this was done intentionally or if it was just a case of neglect on the store's part, but I doubt it matters to your wallet either way.
You will find that most grocery stores have scales located around the fresh produce section. Over the course of my life, I have walked past these scales probably hundreds of times without ever considering that I might actually need to use one, but now it is pretty silly to me not to have taken thirty seconds to check the weight of my ham before I bought it.
I heard the video creator say to check your meat in more of the context of a public service announcement. I guess this means we need to check to make sure we aren't getting taken advantage of because the company who printed the label and packaged the item apparently does not care if they deliver the correct amount of product.
We use barcode scanners and rely on computer systems to provide information about and print our labels in addition to assuming that someone, somewhere has done their job correctly. Then you find out that you just paid for a ham that is three pounds heavier than it really is and you discover that, until this point, you had faith in the system.