Food: What’s In Your Basket? How Fast Are Prices Rising?

The BLS says the CPI rose 2.1% in December from a year ago. Food rose 1.6%. I called the BLS and filled in some numbers.

In CPI Up 0.1 Percent: How Much is the CPI Understated? I disputed the BLS’s year-over-year overall inflation figure of 2.1%, specifically citing housing and the cost of health insurance.

I found the reported food increase reasonable, others didn’t. Whether or not you find the food index believable depends on two things.

  • What you buy
  • How you shop
  • Reader AWC pointed out this BLS article from March of 2017: Prices for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs down 7 percent since August 2015 peak.​

    I downloaded the data and started plugging in numbers for December 2017. The index numbers did not match, so I called the BLS. The person directed me to data downloads which I also found on my own. I still could not match the downloaded numbers.

    What happened is the data for the the preceding chart was indexed to 2007 but the main index is to 1982.

    I asked the BLS agent for year-over-year increases of items and the percentages matched.

    CPI Select Food Items

    I calculated all but the last row from the March article after verifying percentages with the BLS. The last row was read to me over the phone.

    I created the main graph from the above chart.

    How Do You Shop?

    ​Your percentages may vary substantially from the above chart.

    Mine are cheaper because I buy items on sale and freeze them. Sale prices fluctuate less than non-sale prices.

    Properly wrapped food will last a year or more.

    Reader Comments

  • Sechel: I just looked up the data. so i don’t know how they compute these indices, how geography plays a role or what constitutes fish, but i can only tell you in my corner of the world the west side of manhattan, prices for fish are up. not to be a snob, i don’t eat tilapia and flounder, i consume arctic char, sockeye salmon, yellow fin tuna, branzino, and fresh sardines and prices are guaranteed to go up $1-$2 a pound per year.
  • JLS: My yesterday’s grocery shopping included 7 zucchinis at 99c the bag (great for ratatouille); 6 tomatoes at 99c the bag; a 12 oz loaf of rye bread at 49c (good enough for toast), and much else. My local TJ sells a dozen large eggs at $1.49 (or sometimes less). It’s amazing how cheaply you can live if you treat buying as a science. I live well and healthily. And my grandchildren will be instant millionaires when I die.
  • JiveFive: In general food prices are stable, if not lower due to sales-everyday at Jewel. Easy to find two Progresso soups for $3, Still $5.69 for 12 Bay’s English muffins, $10 for four 6 oz frozen pizzas, $10 for 48 Eggo waffles.
  • El-Tedo: We eat a lot of fruit in our house, and I know fruit prices are very seasonable, but they have increased enormously the past 10 years. Items like apples, peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines & oranges used to be priced by the pound, now they are typically a dollar or more a piece. Mangos are a buck fifty a piece! A quarter of a watermelon is over $5! And, don’t even think about buying a bag of cherries unless you’ve been mining some bitcoin.
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    Author: Travis Esquivel

    Travis Esquivel is an engineer, passionate soccer player and full-time dad. He enjoys writing about innovation and technology from time to time.

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