Retail

Consumer World Celebrates 30 Years: 1995 - 2025  
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Walmart Thanksgiving Prices Way Down???

To hear Walmart tell it, food prices for Thanksgiving are way down.

Every year Walmart posts a shopping list of common groceries that one would buy to prepare a full Thanksgiving meal for a large family. For 2025, they are touting a dinner for 10 will cost less than $4 a person, for turkey, cranberry sauce, and all the fixings.

Last year, the price was close to $7 a person. Wow, are we living in a world of grocery prices crashing all of a sudden?

Not quite.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Here is Walmart’s grocery list for their 2024 and 2025 Thanksgiving dinner side by side.

Walmart Thanksgiving Dinner
Shopping List

Walmart Thanksgiving price chart

For 2025, Walmart dropped a net total of six items from their shopping list, including a number of fresh vegetables, and a large southern pecan pie. In their press release FAQ section, they clue you in to the little trick they pulled.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Walmart Thanksgiving FAQ

Of course, most people don’t design their Thanksgiving dinner around Walmart’s suggested menu, so your costs are likely to be much higher.

Consumer World Celebrates 30 Years: 1995 - 2025  
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Florida’s Natural Sued Over Made in USA Claims

Florida's Natural containerA New York consumer recently sued Florida’s Natural, the maker of their namesake orange juice, after she learned that some of the juice was not actually from Florida. [See complaint.]

*MOUSE PRINT:

Florida's Natural juice sources

In fact, some of it was from Mexico and Brazil, but the cartons give the impression that it is a made in America product.

Made in America?

The company explains on their website (but not on the package) that the crop of Florida oranges has been declining so they had to seek out other sources, including foreign concentrates. The front of containers discloses that the juice not only comes from Florida, but also from “the world’s premier citrus-growing regions.” Oddly, the container pictured in the lawsuit is missing that disclosure.

Florida's natural front labels

When we covered this change back in 2022, the front of the carton explicitly mentioned Mexico.

The consumer’s lawyer claims that shoppers are being misled, that the company engaged in deceptive practices, and thus the plaintiffs are entitled to monetary damages.

Consumer World Celebrates 30 Years: 1995 - 2025  
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Tide Drops Ounces, But Number of Loads and the Dosing Caps Remain Unchanged

Tide has once again downsized some its bottles of detergent. The venerable 100-ounce bottle of original Tide that was reduced to 92 ounces in 2014, and then to 84 ounces last year, now has just gone down again to 80 oz.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Tide 84 oz to 80 oz

But miracles of miracles, it still provides enough detergent for 64 laundry loads, they say. Some water was probably removed.

We also discovered last week that the dosing cap fill lines seem to have remained the same on both the new and old bottles.

Tide caps

MrConsumer immediately thought “those sneaks” at P&G are tricking people into using more detergent than is necessary given the new formulation which should allow you to use less. One of our readers, Mitch M., also discovered the cap issue, but figured out what the company actually did.

In the tiniest type on the back label of the bottles, enlarged below, P&G changed the dosing instructions.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Tide dosing instructions

Rather than redesign a new cap, they just changed those unreadable instructions to use a certain amount less than the actual lines on the bottle. The old bottle, for example, said for medium and large loads to fill the cap to just below the line, and the new bottle says to fill it 80-percent of the way up the line. Amazingly, both the old and the new bottles had inaccurate fill lines on them.

How crazy is that? So we asked P&G why they didn’t update the cap with accurate fill lines each time they downsized Tide. The company did not respond.