Why our cans are often only partially filled!

Dear customers,

Today we received yet another enquiry asking why the tins or jars aren’t full. Or, in this particular case, why a jar of zinc from Natur Vital is only a quarter full.

At first glance, this looks like misleading packaging, and we naturally understand that customers might get this impression initially. To save us having to spend time answering the same question over and over again, here is a new blog post intended to address all outstanding queries. 
For the sake of simplicity, rather than rewriting everything I’ve once again spent a great deal of time compiling for the customer, I’ll simply copy it in here!

Hello Mr X,

I can understand why this might look like a waste of material. But for further claims such as ‘deceptive packaging’ or ‘unprofessional’, one should have a bit more specialist knowledge before making such accusations...

1. The Food Information Regulation (LMIV) stipulates that a great deal of information must be printed on the jars, in a font size of at least 0.9–1.2 mm in height.
   That’s not possible on a tin that’s too small; if you were to do it anyway, you’d have to use tiny lettering and would either quickly have the food standards agency on your back – which also carry out an annual inspection of our warehouse, or a warning from a competitor – that’s this absurd law from the Nazi era, which lawyers are now able to make a fortune from, and that only in Germany and Austria.
2. Even this size is an imposition for senior citizens or anyone over 50; for that reason alone, I think it’s justified – or actually still too small. One of our aims as a shop is to be senior-friendly. Quite apart from the issue of handling the containers. I’m sure all our customers over 70 – and we have a great many of them – would agree that a mini-container with a mini-lid would simply be impossible to handle at that age, with poor eyesight and shaky hands. It already annoys me enormously these days when the doctor prescribes me mini-pills that I then have to fiddle with out of mini-tins, and I’m only in my 50s.
3. Manufacturers buy the tins or jars in very large quantities. If, for the 80 products they have, they were to buy, say, 10 different jar sizes and take 10,000 of each size, they pay considerably less per jar than if they had 80 different jars, each optimally adapted to the fill level, of which they would buy 1,250 each. I doubt many customers would be willing to pay not 23.50 euros for the zinc, but 25 euros, because the jars, if bought in such small quantities, would simply be incredibly expensive.
4. Natur Vital goes to great lengths to produce products that are as free from additives as possible. It wouldn’t be a problem to squeeze a bit more cellulose powder into a capsule or add a bit more heavy magnesium oxide into a capsule to make it look like there’s plenty in there and to bring down the price per 100 g, even though there’s hardly anything of value in it. Many manufacturers are happy to do this, but Natur Vital deliberately doesn’t, nor does any of the other brands in our shop.

I also regard it as a scam when a huge muesli bag is only two-thirds full, because that’s clearly no longer down to the text not fitting on the label or smaller bags being more expensive. That is clearly a scam on the customer. But that’s certainly not the case in the situation you’ve mentioned.
I hope that answers your question.

Kind regards

Mario Müller