This is the last straw. I just heard they’ve downsized the boxes for several varieties of Girl Scout cookies and have even made one cookie smaller. What’s the world coming to? How dare they mess with my Girl Scout cookies!

Producers have been downsizing their products from standard, logical sizes to oddball sizes in an attempt to fool us and make more profit. For example, they’ve downsized bleach from 1-gallon bottles to 0.75-gallon bottles and then claim the smaller bottles do more loads.

I eat pasta about four times a week and learned some time ago that spaghetti sauce jars were downsized from 28 ounces to 26 ounces, 24.5 ounces, and even 24 ounces. What ever happened to the 32-ounce quart jars? Getting lucky during the size transition, I happened on a store that still had some of the 28-ounce jars in stock. In protest, I went through all the jars on the shelves and snatched every 28-ounce jar. I bought 37 jars of spaghetti sauce that day, not caring that most of the jars didn’t contain my favorite recipe. I was just happy to be in possession of some of the world’s last few remaining 28-ounce jars of spaghetti sauce.

Dog food. I used to buy it in 20-pound bags for my two pointers, but nowadays, the 17.6-pound bag is the new 20-pound bag. You can still get the 50-pound bags of chow at any warehouse club. But who wants to lug home 50-pound bags of pellets, which dogs hate anyway?

I don’t eat ice cream, but I’ve noticed they’ve also downsized the half-gallon-sized ice-cream cartons. Full 16-ounce pound bags of coffee are nonexistent. The venerable full pound bag of coffee went the way of the typewriter and is down to 12 ounces and even 11 ounces in some brands. Next we’ll see a 14-ounce pound of butter and a 116-ounce gallon of milk.

The quart- and gallon-sized zip-lock bags haven’t been downsized. Why not? Why don’t they also downsize those to accommodate everything else that’s been downsized?

Our groceries have been shrinking out of sight while our grocery bills have been growing out of sight like American waistlines have. Why are Americans becoming upsized while our groceries are being downsized? Being just a Thin Mint away from clinical obesity, the average American now requires almost two commercial airline seats for traveling comfort. But in all fairness, the major airlines have been downsizing their seats while upsizing their junk fees.

All this downsizing nonsense probably began when America adopted the U.S. measurement system. The imperial pint is 19.2 U.S. ounces versus our 16-ounce U.S. pint. Just who decides what the proper size of a pint is anyway?

My last word on the downsizing issue is this: I’ll quit grocery shopping altogether, become a vegetarian, and grow my own food. The only problem I’ll have is figuring out how to grow pasta. The dogs’ll be on their own too.