Are you spending more or less money at the grocery store this year? The answer to that question depends on just what you’re putting into your cart.
The USDA’s Economic Research Service recently put together this chart of where individual food prices have been trending over the last year. There was a very slight overall increase in the total price of food prepared at home, but that doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Some foods had fairly large increases, while others held relatively steady, and some got even cheaper.
The numbers get a little less surprising when you consider that a lot of the price increase was centered around meat (especially beef and pork), whose consumption has been steadily increasing for the past 40 years. One of the few items to have a downturn was non-alcoholic beverages, a trend that may be partially due to our dwindling interest in drinking soda.
https://gizmodo.com/how-the-amount-of-meat-we-eat-changed-in-the-last-40-ye-1682341703
https://gizmodo.com/energy-drink-sales-are-insane-but-they-wont-crush-cof-1552295107
.Top image: hxdyl/ shutterstock
