Americans rewire their grocery shopping routines while digesting the biggest price jump in 50 years - AP News

What the report says

The Associated Press reports that many Americans are reshaping how they buy and eat food after the steepest rise in grocery prices in about 50 years. Using government figures, AP says food bought for home consumption in U.S. cities is 33% more expensive than at the start of 2019, compared with a 6.4% increase over the previous 7 1/2-year span.

AP describes shoppers adopting habits such as checking store apps, clipping coupons, comparing prices across chains and dropping preferred items when shelf prices climb. One example is Apral Jack, 50, of Lexington, Massachusetts, who reviewed supermarket deals before entering a Stop & Shop and said she would buy apples elsewhere after seeing higher prices. AP also documented consumers and food workers in places including San Francisco, Cleveland, Texas, and Kaneʻohe, Hawaii.

The report attributes the surge to several pressures: pandemic-era supply disruptions, higher labor and transportation costs, droughts, hurricanes, animal disease such as bird flu, tariffs on imported goods including coffee, tomatoes and chocolate, and Russia’s war in Ukraine affecting oil and fertilizer markets. AP says renewed Middle East conflict has added to food inflation this year, keeping affordability prominent in the run-up to the fall midterm elections.

AP notes that some wage measures offer a more mixed picture: average weekly earnings for full-time workers have risen slightly faster than grocery costs since 2019, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But Stanford Institute for Economic Policy senior policy fellow Jared Bernstein told AP that shoppers remain highly aware of food prices, especially as housing, electricity and other expenses have also increased.