Food prices will remain high through the holiday season; market analysts see chance of relief in about six months

(Photo by Alison Marras on Unsplash)

"Sticker shock" is one way to describe grocery shopping this past year. Shoppers are not imagining the pain: "The Consumer Price Index shows inflation cooling but food prices — particularly for some holiday staples — remain high," reports Casey Quinlan of States Newsroom. "The CPI increased 0.1% in November, which was lower than some economists expected. Over the last 12 months, it rose 7.1%. Food went up 0.5% last month after an increase of 0.6% in October. The food index climbed 10.6% over last year."

While U.S. inflation has dipped in general, grocery prices have not relented. David Ortega, associate professor at the department of agricultural food and resource economics at Michigan State University, told Quinlan, “Grocery prices are still 12% higher than they were a year ago. . . . The good news is that food price increases and grocery price increases peaked in August. They’re just slowly starting to come down."

The war in Ukraine, supply-chain backups, agricultural-output decreases due to climate change and the deadliest bird flu in U.S. history have all contributed to increased food prices, Quinlan reports. Ortega told Quinlan that although it’s hard to say when food prices will begin to come down, he expects that it could happen in the next six months or so.

Donna McCallister, an assistant professor at at Texas Tech, told Quinlan that prices always increase this time of year, compounding the problem. Quinlan notes, "According to Bankrate’s Nov. 23 analysis of the cost of holiday essentials, six of 10 of the most inflated prices were for food, including turkey, bakery items, eggs, flour and prepared mixes."

McCallister gave Quinlan some suggestions for trimming grocery costs by "cutting down on food waste by going to stores more frequently for specific meals, buying some items in bulk, or switching from name brand to store brand to save money this holiday season."