Home > News & Media > Rising food costs are changing what we put on the table

Rising food costs are changing what we put on the table

Sun-Sentinel – April 1, 2008

Steadily rising food costs aren’t just causing grocery shoppers to do a double-take at the checkout line — they’re also changing the very ways we feed our families.

The worst case of food inflation in nearly 20 years has more Americans giving up restaurant meals to eat at home. We’re buying fewer luxury food items, eating more leftovers and buying more store brands instead of name-brand items.

Record-high energy, corn and wheat prices in the past year have led to sticker shock in the grocery aisles. At $1.32, the average price of a loaf of bread has increased 32 percent since January 2005. In the last year alone, the average price of a carton of eggs has increased almost 50 percent.

Ground beef, milk, chicken, apples, tomatoes, lettuce, coffee and orange juice are among the staples that cost more these days, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, food prices nationwide rose nearly 5 percent in 2007, according to the Department of Agriculture. That means a pound of coffee, on average, cost 57 cents more at year’s end than in 2006. A 12-ounce can of frozen, concentrated orange juice now averages $2.53 — a 67-cent increase in just two years.

And a carton of grade A, large eggs will set you back $2.17. That’s an increase of nearly $1 since February 2006.

“The economy is having a definite impact on shopper behavior,” said Tim Hammonds, president and chief executive officer of the Food Marketing Institute, a retail trade group. “People are significantly changing what they do.”

Last year consumer prices rose more in South Florida than they had in 17 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual consumer inflation rate for the Miami- Fort Lauderdale region was 5.8 percent, which was much higher than the 4.1 percent increase in consumer prices nationwide. The local consumer inflation rate was the worst since the 6.7 percent level in 1990. The bureau does not measure prices in Palm Beach County, but pricing trends are comparable across South Florida.

Soaring prices are causing shoppers to rethink long-held habits such as store loyalty.

For Peggy and David Valdez, of Houston, feeding their family of four means scouring grocer ads for the best prices, taking fewer trips as a way to save gas and simply buying less food, period.

“We do more selecting, looking around, seeing which prices are cheaper,” said David Valdez. “We are being more selective. We have got to find the cheapest price.”

Wal-Mart and other supercenters that sell food now account for 24 percent of the market, according to the most recent annual survey of shopping habits by Hammonds’ organization.

In 2007, the FMI survey showed the average number of weekly shopping trips falling below two per household for the first time.

Nationwide, a family of four on a moderate-cost shopping plan now spends an average of $904 each month for groceries, an $80 increase from two years ago, according to the USDA.

Those who can’t absorb the added expenses are increasingly seeking help from food pantries. America’s Harvest, which distributes nearly 2 billion pounds of food and grocery products each year to more than 200 food banks across the country, estimates that its overall client load increased by 20 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Among retailers, the surge in commodity prices — from corn, now in high demand because of increased ethanol production, to wheat that has tripled in price over the past 10 months — has some industry observers suggesting that higher food prices aren’t a temporary fluctuation but instead may be here to stay.

“We don’t exactly have a crystal ball,” said Whole Foods’ Perry Abbenante, a senior global grocery buyer. “But I’m not sure [prices] are going back. We’re preparing for a new threshold.”

Click Here to View This Article