Food inflation

Being an enthusiastic user of spreadsheets, I have been putting all my monthly costs on a spreadsheet for some years. Its very easy. All my food is put on the credit card. It is all from Morrisons which is only a few hundred yards away, and my pattern of buying and eating has not changed for a long time.

I was not at all surprised to see that the increase of 2008 over 2007 was [size=+2]36%.[/size] This compares with the government's own figure of 10.1% for the December food index, and 4.1% for all inflation.

The only consolation is that the government has promised us that we will never again have another recession.

 

How can they guarantee that? Muppets!

I can see food going up in price too. The supermarkets make a big song and dance about reducing prices, but the items they aren't reducing are quietly creeping up and up in price since the end of last year.
I also get annoyed that fruit and veg cost more than fast food.

 

That aggravates me terribly too.

In asda you can buy 5 ready made meals for four pounds, I have had to part with £1 just for a butternut squash, and 80p for a head of lettuce-outrageous

 

Makes me think long and hard about getting that allotment.

 

Just glad I am making a start with a veg patch. Food prices are set to soar again yet.

 

The price hike of food has been going on for years and they all seem to be the same.Before we got our breadmaker the Granary bread that we were buying at Tesco's which I need for my IBS {Mr K won't eat that sliced carboard stuff} went up to £1.19 a loaf,the cheap cat food has now gone up from 19p to around 28p and the fussy little so and so's won't even eat that at times.

Cucumbers have steadily gone up from 69p to now £1 each and are probably more than that since we went last weekend.Iceburg lettuce are now 99p and are probably higher as well now.

Even the value baked beans have gone up from 11p a tin are now 29p a tin

The excuse of the supermarkets used to be that it was the fuel price hikes that were putting up the prices but surely now that thewy have come down then so shouldthe food.They all keep saying they are rolling back the prices,yes they are to the prices they were before they put them right up.

I don't even buy the amount of fruit that I used to buy each time we went.I would often have oranges,bananas,grapes,strawberries {when cheap} in the fridge all at the same time but now I am eating the apples that we grow over at the allotment and the fruit in the fridge like raspberries that we have an abundance of....

We have looked at shopping at Aldi,but there wasn't even a decent choice of stuff and they don't even sell half the stuff we eat as the shops are so small and they need to cram in all the non food stuff as well and the Cucumbers went mushy just as fast as the Tesco's ones do.

I was amazed that on other forums that I peruse from time to time that there is so much hatred for Mr T,though I have to say I have used them most of my married life,because years ago there was only them or Sainsbury's.You can tell they are making a fortune to be able to build more and more of their stores all over the place...

Lucky for us we can grow a lot of our fruit and vegetables and I now try to make a lot of my own meals from scratch instead of buying all that mass produced gloop they try to pass off as food.

I do often wonder where it will all end,because if things are tight for people now what is it going to be like when we come to retire{thats if the powers to be let us that is}

 

We need to stop expecting to eat whatever food we, whatever the time of year. As an example, we were in Sainsbury's yesterday and they had blueberries reduced. From Chile!! Why, when we'll be producing them here in a few months time. The examples always quoted-eating strawberries in winter and asparagus out of season still hold true.
The sooner we eat food that's in season, the better for all of us. I admit there are some foods that we have to import-bananas, for example which will never be grown here. But why have we come to expect certain foods in winter, therefore bumping up the price even more?

And as for importing lamb from New Zealand when Welsh lamb is just as good and hasn't travelled from the other side of the world!!

 

I often eat Strawberries because I have just been diagnosed with borderline Diabetes so as they are a low GI food try to eat them when they are cheap but refuse to buy them when they are £2.99 for a small punnet.I buy oranges for Mr K as we can't grow them over here and he also likes Kiwi fruit but they again need the right growing conditions as do Blueberries.Plus it is a long time until the Strawberries are ready for eating if home grown.I must admit I do like to have a variety of different fruit and veg to eat and as Mr K always said he hated having to eat Brussel Sprouts every single day for months on end that his dad had grown,one sure way of putting someone off of a type of veg.

I don't think I have ever seen English lamb in the supermarkets here and they were saying that a lot of the Welsh land is still contaminated after that Chernobyl Nuclear disaster in the 80's.

By the way if you are thinking of getting an allotment I should put your name down pretty quick as they are getting as rare as hens teeth because everyone has the same idea:ntty:

 

I think that the prices are awful I have noticed how things have been creaping up in price, Heinz baked beans are now 65p.
We've now gotten a bread maker, that way we can make some when we want to have some instead of buying a loaf a week just incase and it going to waste.
If people stopped buying out of season then wouldn't that help with some of the prices?? I believe in seasonal and as local as possible (with the exception of things we don't have the climate to grow), Tesco do the local produce range and I can't work out if it's better to spend a few extra pence to halp a local farmer or save the fre extra pence to pay for my beans.

I had put my name down for an allottment but looked at my garden and realised is big enough to grow what we will eat, that way we're not also paying out for the land.

I personally am getting to the stage of makeing my own...making preserves, sauces, jam, pickling...I'm on a very low budget and it seems that's my best option, grow things myself. I already only buy in season fruit and veg and uk only (exclude bananas and kiwi)

 

I've not heard about the Welsh land being contaminated but surely that would apply to all of the UK so all our home grown food would be the same?

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/may/01/jamesmeikle

Hope this has worked SG.We watch Country File or tape it to watch later and there was a report a few years ago and they put a Gyger? counter on the sheep and it went off the scale.

I often think that is one reason why there is so much infertility these days with all the stuff being pumped into the atmosphere as well as all the chemicals like DDT that was heavily used years ago.

In the thirty years I have been buying grocery's I don't think I have ever seen any Spring lamb in the shops

One report I read says that the Irish Sea is the most polluted sea int he world because of all the waste that was pumped into over the years but how true that is,I don't know.

Even smoking is polluting our bodies and some chap was saying on the radio on Friday after Heathrow airport got the new runway ok that there are parts of the Motorway down that way thta has got a permenent fuel cloud hanging over it from all the planes that shed a lot of Aviation fuel before landing,something that I never knew happened...

 

Anyone noticed the price fixing going on amongst the supermakrets?

 

Read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood-a future society where infertility in the past has had dire consequences.

 

I agree 100%. And as a nation, we're very wasteful with food, throwing away about one third of it even when it's still fit to eat.

There are many, many countries in the world where the people would give their right arms to have the food availability that we do.

 

Supermarkets will only sell what people want, or think they need.

So my grapes that have come from S America would not be there if people didn't want them, I certainly do.
I think we should be able to buy things out of season, lets face it, its not out of season in its country of origin.

There is more money around than we are led to believe, judging by the way people carry on these days.
Spending is a way of life now for a generation or so, so any slow down will come very hard, for the consumer and the worker.
But supermarkets will never lose out, we all have to eat, and they have killed off the competition in the last few years, at the same time as screwing their suppliers.