Sausages with less pork, shrinking mouthwash bottles and the tea making fewer cuppas – which items in your weekly shop have suffered from shrink or skimpflation?

Consumer group Which? has been asking shoppers about products they buy which have either been downsized without the equivalent price drop or altered to include less of a particular ingredient, and here’s what they found...

At a time when grocery prices remain ‘very high’, more than three quarters of us, says consumer champion group Which?, have noticed changes to some items we regularly throw into our shopping baskets.

At the end of last year researchers asked about items thought to have fallen victim to so-called shrinkflation or skimpflation and the study was inundated with responses.

Among the examples highlighted was Listerine Fresh Burst mouthwash, which shrank from 600ml to 500ml. But despite the reduced quantity the price also rose by 52p at Tesco - meaning shoppers were paying 21% more for 17% less.

Similarly boxes of PG Tips The Tasty Decaf Pyramid tea bags went from containing 180 teabags to just 140 at a number of supermarkets. And while many retailers also dropped the price accordingly, says the investigation, at Ocado the price of a box rose from £4 to £5.09 despite the size reduction. Scroll down for the full list.

Ele Clark, Which? Retail Editor, said the group would like to see changes to products made clearer.

She explained: “Supermarkets and manufacturers must be more upfront by making sure changes to popular products are clear, and by ensuring that unit pricing is prominent, legible and consistent in-store and online so that shoppers can easily compare prices across different brands and pack sizes.”

Flushable toilet wipes, gravy granules, crisps and snack bars, reveals the study, have also made the Which? list of products to have been shrunk in size. See the full list below:

Shrinkflation examples:

*Listerine - went from 600ml to 500ml at Asda and Tesco

*PG Tips Tasty Decaf Pyramid tea bags went from 180 bags to 140 at Morrisons, Ocado and Waitrose

*Andrex Classic Clean Flushable Washlets Moist Toilet Tissue Wipes - from 40 to 36 in a pack at Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco

*Bisto Best Chicken Gravy Granules - from 250g to 230g at Asda and Morrisons

*Cadbury’s Brunch Chocolate Chip Bars - from six to five in a pack at Asda, Morrisons, Ocado and Tesco

*Coffee Mate Original Whitener - from 500g to 450g at Tesco

*Colgate Triple Action Toothpaste - from 100ml to 75ml at Aldi, Asda, Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco

*Kettle Chips Sea Salt and Crushed Black Peppercorns Crisps - from 150g to 130g at Tesco

*Lurpak Slightly Salted Butter - from 225g to 180g at Morrisons and Sainsbury's

*McVitie’s Digestives Dark Chocolate Biscuits - from 433g to 400g at Morrisons and Tesco

*Yeo Valley Organic Salted Spreadable - from 500g to 400g at Sainsbury’s and Tesco

Skimpflation:

*Tesco Finest sausages - from 97% pork to 90%

*Morrisons Guacamole (150g) – from 80% avocado to 77%

*Morrisons The Best Lasagne Al Forno (400g) – from 30% beef to 26%

*Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Lasagne Ready Meal (400g) – from 28% beef to 26%

*Tesco Beef Lasagne (1.5kg) – from 23% beef to 19%

*Tesco Tex Mex Chicken Enchiladas (480g) – from 27% chicken to 20%

*Waitrose Butter Chicken Curry – from 47% chicken to 41%

*Yeo Valley Spreadable Butter – from 54% butter to 50%.

In response, manufacturers said that changes often reflected their own rising costs or helped to keep products more affordable for consumers. In some cases changes had improved the flavour or healthiness of a product.

Andrew Opie, Director of Food & Sustainability at the British Retail Consortium added: “Given the challenges facing households from the cost of living squeeze, retailers are solely focused to find ways to limit rising prices for customers against the rising cost of production, while maintaining the excellent quality of products.

“For branded goods - not produced by the food retailers themselves – changes to size and pricing are largely determined by the brands themselves, reflecting the costs of production they face.”

Nestle, which makes Coffee Mate Original, added: “Like every manufacturer, we have faced significant increases in the cost of raw materials, energy, packaging and transportation, making it more expensive to manufacture our products.

“We are doing everything we can to manage these costs in the short-term, but in order to maintain the highest standards of quality, it is sometimes necessary to make minor adjustments to the weights of our products.”