I didn't read every response but I have noticed this since around the end of 2019 and it just gets worse. It isn't even the cost per item, it is the size per item for basics you get at the grocery store if you buy paper towels. Everything shrinks and the price goes up - guess they hope we don't notice.
Groceries on Friday after work and yesterday (Monday) back to get more. I am Celiac like
@Ldtag but it doesn't impact me that much but I eat healthy and if you want to eat healthy it is expensive. Fresh fruit and vegetables, we go to butchers or fish marts for meat and fish simply because the quality is better even if the price is similar or less. You can't compare a salmon steak or a decent steak from a local company that specializes in fish or a butcher who specializes in meats - the price is better, my better half finds the cost is the same or less.
As impatient as I am like
@Cheapshot - either one of us will grab more when something is on sale. Not sure if anyone noticed - I recall how much protein and the cals in a can of tuna, read it the other day when I was mixing up hummus and tuna to put on a gluten free (high protein) bagel and noticed the cals are lower, the cans either shrunk or my hands grew, and the protein content is down by almost 50%.
Eggs are a great source of protein and easily digested, not sure where you are but here we can buy 12 free range chicken or duck eggs 2 miles up the road for 1/3 less than a dozen eggs in any of the grocery store. The flavour can't be compared or the colour, because the chickens and ducks live like they do in the wild and we can see the massive pen outside for all of them and then they sleep in the barn. I suspect, but can't prove it, you are getting better quality food with the eggs. Same with free range chicken - cost per lb is less that grocery store chicken and I'm a broken record but the taste isn't comparable. It is much better. We fill a freezer with the chickens.
There are lots of farming communities that butcher their own beef, pork, etc. They are happy to sell 1/4 or 1/2 a pig or cow which is our next step, but right now we have to make room for a large deep freeze. I grew up on a mini farm and we had all our own meat, butchered everything but the pigs, as my father was not experienced like
@Sorbate.
I work with a lot of potato farmers and buy large bags of potatoes from them direct. They are selling to Costco/Walmart and they have to meet a certain quality and they get marked up by the big box stores so they sell to us at the same cost as they sell. I became friends with one over the years and buy their potatoes. They don't grow sweat potatoes which I love so we do buy those but look for a sale in the grocery store and put them in a cold room so they don't sprout and go bad.
I find the cost of almost everything has gone up which means taxes go up and it seems to coincide with the year 2019-2020 when something else hit the world. Basic food staples are tax free, but a lot of what people eat is not tax free if you don't eat healthy.
Look at the cost of an apartment or the cost to build a house compared to the year 2019 and it is staggering, the vast increase. It isn't out of the ordinary for people who make a modest living to have to decide do we pay the bills, or buy groceries this week and when 1/3 of after tax income goes to a modest apartment, it isn't a stretch to understand why.
