海角大神

鈥業t鈥檚 a lot for me鈥�: Inside the challenge of soaring food costs

From the Magazine

Not all that long ago, food shopping was one of Joei Chan鈥檚 mindless chores. She didn鈥檛 think about which grocery had the best prices on bananas or bread, whether to wait until items on her shopping list were on sale, or whether there might be a coupon for yogurt.

But these days, the Boston resident says, food shopping has become 鈥渟trategic.鈥�

鈥淣ow, it鈥檚 all about: How can I best save my money?鈥� says the recent college grad who now works in hospitality, trying to speak over the amplified announcer and screeching brakes of Boston鈥檚 T.

Housing and healthcare costs received a lot of the cost-of-living attention in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, gas prices have captured headlines. But it鈥檚 the food costs that people such as Ms. Chan notice every day. As she says, it鈥檚 鈥渙ne expense that is a lot for me.鈥�

Since 2020, overall grocery prices have jumped about 24%, rising even faster than the cost of living, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the last year alone, grocery prices were up an average 2.4% from a year earlier.

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said food costs could rise by 3.1% in 2026 compared with last year鈥檚 grocery bills.

鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 surprise me to see some further rise,鈥� Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said at an April 10 news briefing.

In a CNBC-SurveyMonkey poll released in April, more than half of Americans said everyday life had become less affordable over the past year. Three-quarters of them (76%) pointed to rising grocery prices as a leading cause, more so than gasoline and transportation (71%), healthcare (37%), housing (32%), or any other category.

It doesn鈥檛 appear to matter to consumers that food price inflation has slowed significantly since 2022, when 鈥渇ood-at-home鈥� prices, meaning grocery prices, soared 9.9%, the biggest jump since 1979, according to the USDA. Experts cited reasons ranging from a strain of avian influenza that devastated flocks of laying hens that year to the Russia-Ukraine war, which kept Ukrainian grain as well as Russian energy and fertilizer off the market, causing prices to soar and food exports to dwindle.

Despite slowing inflation, food bills remain a flashpoint for consumers鈥� broader inflation concerns. Part of this is the nature of food itself.

While people can modify daily routines to cope with rising costs (such as carpooling, stopping new clothes purchases, canceling vacations, or cutting back on eating out and going to the movies), they typically don鈥檛 stop buying food. Unless stretched so thin that skipping meals becomes necessary, they also can shop for cheaper groceries, of course. But they still tend to purchase the same amount of food.

These factors keep food demand generally steady, or 鈥渋nelastic,鈥� as economists put it. That inelasticity, in turn, makes food prices especially sensitive to inflationary surges.

Groceries and the gas pump

This is particularly true now, with oil prices rising.

Food prices remain especially susceptible to energy price shocks because energy plays a major role at every step of the supply chain. Diesel fuel powers the tractors that farmers use to plant their crops. The nitrogen fertilizers they spread and the heat they use to dry their crops typically come from natural gas.

Then there鈥檚 what happens after the farm 鈥� the shipping, processing, and packaging 鈥� that add the most costs. Each stage involves some form of energy, including the electric power grocery stores use to keep produce crisp and ice cream frozen.

Some food prices rise faster than others. Right now, for example, beef prices are soaring because of drought and higher operating costs, which have driven cattle herd counts to a 75-year low. Fresh tomato prices hit an eight-year high last month because of rising energy costs, tariffs on Mexican tomato imports, and weather problems in Florida, a key growing region. Eggs, on the other hand, are getting cheaper because farmers are rebuilding flocks after the 2022 avian flu outbreak.

Consumers notice

鈥淔ood鈥檚 gone up a lot this year,鈥� says Vanessa Salmon, a resident of Benton Harbor, Michigan, who lives on a fixed income. 鈥淔ig Newtons that I buy were actually 87 cents at Aldi when I first moved to Michigan in 2018. And now, they鈥檙e about $2.50. And I鈥檓 pretty sure that they鈥檙e all a little bit smaller, too.鈥�

鈥淚 don鈥檛 buy the nicer ingredients anymore,鈥� says her son, Leo V. Kaplan, of nearby Kalamazoo. That means regular mushrooms instead of shiitakes. Planning special meals for celebrations can also be daunting, he says. 鈥淚 spent $70 on cooking a birthday cake.鈥�

鈥淚 think we haven鈥檛 seen even maybe the worst of it,鈥� adds Ms. Salmon.

Waste not, want not

Hardest hit by rising food prices are young people, families with children, and low-income households. A February survey by LendingTree, an online financial marketplace, found that roughly 20% of people in those groups said affording food had become difficult. By contrast, only 5% of baby boomers report such difficulty.

Whatever the challenge, people are seeking solutions. Nearly 9 in 10 Americans are taking action to reduce costs, with 30% reporting they are paying closer attention to grocery prices, according to LendingTree. One in 4 reported cutting back spending on 鈥渟plurge鈥� items or replacing brand-name purchases with store or generic brands.

One-quarter of Americans also said they were paying more attention to reducing food waste and eating more leftovers.

Food waste remains a big problem in the United States. Some 70 million tons of food were wasted in 2024, most of it before it reaches consumers, according to an April report by ReFED, a Chicago-based nonprofit working to address the problem. That鈥檚 about 29% of the U.S. food supply.

Though huge, the number represents a 2.2% decrease from 2023, the first such decline since the pandemic. Households trimmed nearly 950,000 tons from residential food waste in part by increasing donations to food banks.

Much of the progress is linked to focusing on everyday items that are easy to manage, such as milk, according to ReFED. Foods that are more difficult to track, such as fresh fruit, did not show similar reductions. The organization is working to promote ways that make perishables more visible, including refrigerator-monitoring tools and 鈥渆at me first鈥� labels.

But to waste less (and thereby save more), consumers can: create weekly meal plans, shop with a list to avoid overbuying, store produce in airtight containers, and keep refrigerators organized. Other strategies include eating leftovers, freezing food before it spoils, monitoring expiration dates, and composting scraps.

鈥淭his past year, the often 鈥榠nvisible鈥� problem of food waste became much more visible,鈥� the report said. 鈥淲ith persistent food insecurity, shrinking federal food assistance programs, and significantly elevated grocery prices stressing consumers and challenging food businesses, a wide range of external factors set the stage for food waste action.鈥�