Hi Mary,
Let me try to cover your concerns with 3 concise answers:
1. Changing package sizes (the 12 ounce package of 1 pound bacon has been around for the 7 decades of my life; FWIW during WWII, from time to time, - we couldn't get 'any ounces, now matter how much we were willing to pay - - in THAT perspective, things today are far better;
2. As for tomato sauce, a few years ago, my wife and I were fans of Wegman's Puttanesca bottled sauce, while the 16 ounce size has stayed the same today the price has risen to $2.39 from the $1.99 of a couple years ago - - SO we went on a mission to find our NEW-BEST sauce; after viewing a half dozen "sauce-tournaments", on TV, we've now arrived AT Hunt's Tomato Sauce, that is as GOOD as we've ever tasted for $2.49 for a 32 ounce can, and that INCLUDES perhaps a dozen specialty products found everywhere, e.g. Rao's super sauce, now approaching $10/26 ounce bottle, and a couple of New York "super-best's" at even higher prices - - SO there can be 'methods to madness'!
3. Finally, as to your "nice bottled water": Having grown-up in The Bronx, NYC I have always been partial to NYC's modestly treated mountain-spring originated water; my NJ Town's water treatment is reasonably akin to NYC's, but the shoppers with shopping carts full of bottle water, are evident everywhere! I AM CONVINCED people have lost their minds in stepping participiating in the United States' recent two decades bottled-water craze. To add some perspective, we were recently in Thailand, where bottle water is MOST CERTAINLY NEEDED, and is sold in bottles with SEEMINGLY unremovable/untamperable caps - - LO AND BEHOLD, around too many street corners to recall, there were the "garden-hose-filler" crowds . . .
