Cut the slack: Let the air out of food packaging

"Slack fill" may not be the biggest problem with packaged foods, but it’s one of the most irksome. Slack fill is when we break open a package and find it only half full (though the net weight is accurate).

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a non-profit consumer advocacy group which focuses on nutrition and food safety, claims food manufactures are adding too much "slack fill" to packaged food products. The CSPI calls it a form of deception—and an environmental nightmare to boot.

“It would be disheartening, even shocking, if it weren’t so commonplace,” said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. “But as consumers we’ve almost come to expect that our food packages will be half full of food and half full of air.

“Slack fill is just one trick that food marketers employ to make us thing we’re getting more for our money than we are.”

CSPI Calls on FDA, State Attorneys General to Crack Down on "slack fill".

---