Joe Biden has criticised food companies for alleged “shrinkflation”, making products smaller while keeping prices the same, in a video to mark the Super Bowl.

The US president criticised big consumer brands for a shrinkflation “rip-off” on Sunday night and said the “American public is tired of being played for suckers”.

American football’s blue riband event attracts a huge audience in the world’s wealthiest country, and advertisers flock to market their products.

However, the video would have made uncomfortable viewing for some of the world’s biggest food companies, including PepsiCo, Mondelēz and Unilever.

That was in part, some economists believe, driven by several factors including monetary policy stimulus in response to the Covid pandemic, the huge rise in global energy prices as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and heavy government spending pushed by Biden and other countries.

Inflation dropped to 3.1% in December but some companies are thought to have responded to rising costs by marginally shrinking the size of products – shrinkflation – as well as changing recipes to reduce the amount of more expensive ingredients – sometimes known as “skimpflation”.

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