4 ms·

I cook from basic ingredients almost exclusively. This avoids most of the issues in this article, but then again prices for these have doubled or more over the

I cook from basic ingredients almost exclusively. This avoids most of the issues in this article, but then again prices for these have doubled or more over the last two years. At least there it is more in your face.

not_the_fda 3y ago
The same, but I don't think the inflation has been that bad, maybe 20% over the two years, with it leveling off the last couple months.
gruez 3y ago
>but then again prices for these have doubled or more over the last two years. Where are you buying your food? At least according to BLS data raw ingredient inflation is nowhere near that high. If you compare the price indices between today and late 2019, the max price you see is 59% (for the entire period, not annualized). Most are in the 20-30% range. I know this is BLS data for the whole country and localized inflation might be higher in specific places and/or outside the US, but 4x higher seems like hyperbole. Here's a comparison based on an arbitrary selection of "basic ingredients": category Nov. 2023 Dec. 2019 % rise Flour and prepared flour mixes 325.853 225.638 44.4% Rice, pasta, cornmeal 291.728 234.282 24.5% Beef and veal 415.788 313.818 32.5% Pork chops(4) 242.457 191.834 26.4% Other pork including roasts, steaks, and ribs(5) 160.961 129.193 24.6% Chicken(4)(5) 194.86 152.095 28.1% Other uncooked poultry including turkey(5) 209.362 147.475 42.0% Fresh fish and seafood(4)(5) 220.513 186.119 18.5% Eggs(4) 261.105 213.421 22.3% Milk(5) 176.76 144.845 22.0% Cheese and related products(4) 264.392 234.486 12.8% Fresh fruits 417.433 353.047 18.2% Fresh vegetables 376.284 334.875 12.4% Frozen fruits and vegetables(5) 186.642 142.654 30.8% Roasted coffee(6) 250.296 196.173 27.6% Sugar and sugar substitutes 261.475 186.257 40.4% Butter and margarine(5) 284.894 199.761 42.6% [1] https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201022124428if_/https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx https://web.archive.org/web/20201022124428if_/https://www.bl...
- PeterStuer 3y ago
  US prices seem to be very different from where I live.
- anonymouswacker 3y ago
  Government lies, aka statistics, conveniently ignore the cost of high quality items when doing averages. If you are buying eggs as a health conscious person, you know not to buy $1/dozen eggs any more because industry producers have made them low cost by reducing quality, feeding chickens soy and the cheapest excuse for food. The pastured ones are 5-10x the cost and the quality is night and day. US government conveniently views these things as staples, but they are not.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/ https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedo... I think this sums it up well. People mostly don't know or care about how hedonic regression is used in CPI (myself included, on knowing). I don't think the process is easy to understand nor transparent (although I may be wrong here). But BLS denies this assessment (and it's not 100% related to the article posted, but closely related to your comment I think): https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-about-cpi.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-abo... > When the cost of food rises, does the CPI assume that consumers switch to less desired foods, such as substituting hamburger for steak? > No. ... > Is the use of "hedonic quality adjustment" in the CPI simply a way of lowering the inflation rate? > No. ... Obviously, they provide their own explanations, but I'm not going to paste the whole thing. This is definitely something I'd like to understand better though. Especially every time I complain about how Chewy Chips Ahoy or some other product I enjoyed in my childhood is absolute garbage now, and I don't buy the explanation that I simply had bad taste as a kid. They also host this Quality Adjustment page to say which types of products do or don't have such adjustments: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm. So maybe this is transparency. I think it would take me 2+ hours on a weekend to really research this to understand it myself.
minkiebun 3y ago
FRED does a nice job of cataloguing prices of the most basic ingredients. The history on them makes clear that a lot of these stories round off to noise; people noticing things going up and not noticing when they stay flat or decline. Take for example eggs: they’re up about 20% over the last two years… but they’re down from 15 years ago, because eggs have (mostly) stayed really cheap for a long time. And that’s not down in inflation adjusted dollars, it’s just down.
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  Yep. You need to go back to ~1996 to get to a 2x increase in cost of food at home: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d3aL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d3aL Though as a general rule people notice acceleration not speed, so the big pandemic bump is clearly more impactful than a slower increase.
  - rileymat2 3y ago
    Is there a stat that tracks discount sale prices? I typically craft my purchases around what is discounted, but those “seem” dramatically worse than the general price increases.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Eggs around here were as low as 29 cents (during an egg price war, to be fair, but normal prices were well below a buck) and during whatever egg crisis there was recently peaked at nearly $4 a dozen. Both were the same "cheapest eggs in the store" though the local farm-raised eggs had a much smaller increase (maybe from $4.29 to $4.79). Since then the cheapest eggs have come back down somewhat. The problem is statistics count averages or price on a certain day, etc, people remember the _highest_ price they paid recently.
andy99 3y ago
I wonder. There was an article I saw recently about the nutritional content of either grains or vegetables going down over time. Anecdotally a lot of meat is worse, either full of water or otherwise lower quality. There was something a few years ago about butter quality going down, reportedly because of how cows were being fed. Anyway you see my point. Even basic ingredients are subject to the same kinds of -flations. "Continuous improvement" is constantly ratcheting down quality.
armchairhacker 3y ago
I'd like to know if there's any way whole foods can get enshittified. Some people say there's a real difference in health between non-organic and organic foods, others say it's BS. Anecdotally, some people say the meat and produce from places like and Walmart are worse than those from places like Whole foods, and generics are worse than brand names, even ignoring organic vs. non-organic; but I wonder how much is placebo, and how much is a real difference in nutrition. I assume that some products are literally the same thing repackaged, but others are different in ways that matter. There's also things which are supposed to be monitored by the FDA, like using pesticides and injecting meat with saline. My understanding is that the FDA is pretty strict in the US but who knows? Foods like: - Fresh fruit and vegetables - Frozen fruit and vegetables - Canned fruit and vegetables - Eggs - Dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt) - Grains (oats, rice) - Fresh meat and fish - Frozen meat and fish - Canned meat and fish (e.g. canned chicken, tuna) - Ground meat - Seasoning - Olive oil, butter
- lozenge 3y ago
  From what I understand, if you want to farm in a way that prioritises taste and quality over cost, you need to get that Organic certification. Otherwise, consumers will not pay for it. Meanwhile, you could also chase the Organic certification to fetch a higher price, but not care about the taste... then it's up to the buyer (mainly the grocery store) whether you reached their quality bar. I think there's a big regional variation as well. By the time the avocados get from CA to NJ, maybe the different offerings don't taste that different. But the opposite might be true for another foodstuff.
- hammock 3y ago
  USDA* not FDA You are only standing at the edge of the rabbit hole friend. Don’t be afraid to take a few steps in
- jonatron 3y ago
  New seed varieties made for growth and shelf life, greenhouse grown instead of field grown
  - 3y ago

not_the_fda 3y ago

The same, but I don't think the inflation has been that bad, maybe 20% over the two years, with it leveling off the last couple months.

gruez 3y ago

>but then again prices for these have doubled or more over the last two years. Where are you buying your food? At least according to BLS data raw ingredient inflation is nowhere near that high. If you compare the price indices between today and late 2019, the max price you see is 59% (for the entire period, not annualized). Most are in the 20-30% range. I know this is BLS data for the whole country and localized inflation might be higher in specific places and/or outside the US, but 4x higher seems like hyperbole. Here's a comparison based on an arbitrary selection of "basic ingredients": category Nov. 2023 Dec. 2019 % rise Flour and prepared flour mixes 325.853 225.638 44.4% Rice, pasta, cornmeal 291.728 234.282 24.5% Beef and veal 415.788 313.818 32.5% Pork chops(4) 242.457 191.834 26.4% Other pork including roasts, steaks, and ribs(5) 160.961 129.193 24.6% Chicken(4)(5) 194.86 152.095 28.1% Other uncooked poultry including turkey(5) 209.362 147.475 42.0% Fresh fish and seafood(4)(5) 220.513 186.119 18.5% Eggs(4) 261.105 213.421 22.3% Milk(5) 176.76 144.845 22.0% Cheese and related products(4) 264.392 234.486 12.8% Fresh fruits 417.433 353.047 18.2% Fresh vegetables 376.284 334.875 12.4% Frozen fruits and vegetables(5) 186.642 142.654 30.8% Roasted coffee(6) 250.296 196.173 27.6% Sugar and sugar substitutes 261.475 186.257 40.4% Butter and margarine(5) 284.894 199.761 42.6% [1] https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201022124428if_/https://www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-u.xlsx https://web.archive.org/web/20201022124428if_/https://www.bl...

PeterStuer 3y ago
US prices seem to be very different from where I live.
anonymouswacker 3y ago
Government lies, aka statistics, conveniently ignore the cost of high quality items when doing averages. If you are buying eggs as a health conscious person, you know not to buy $1/dozen eggs any more because industry producers have made them low cost by reducing quality, feeding chickens soy and the cheapest excuse for food. The pastured ones are 5-10x the cost and the quality is night and day. US government conveniently views these things as staples, but they are not.
- brvsft 3y ago
  https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/ https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedo... I think this sums it up well. People mostly don't know or care about how hedonic regression is used in CPI (myself included, on knowing). I don't think the process is easy to understand nor transparent (although I may be wrong here). But BLS denies this assessment (and it's not 100% related to the article posted, but closely related to your comment I think): https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-about-cpi.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-abo... > When the cost of food rises, does the CPI assume that consumers switch to less desired foods, such as substituting hamburger for steak? > No. ... > Is the use of "hedonic quality adjustment" in the CPI simply a way of lowering the inflation rate? > No. ... Obviously, they provide their own explanations, but I'm not going to paste the whole thing. This is definitely something I'd like to understand better though. Especially every time I complain about how Chewy Chips Ahoy or some other product I enjoyed in my childhood is absolute garbage now, and I don't buy the explanation that I simply had bad taste as a kid. They also host this Quality Adjustment page to say which types of products do or don't have such adjustments: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm. So maybe this is transparency. I think it would take me 2+ hours on a weekend to really research this to understand it myself.

minkiebun 3y ago

FRED does a nice job of cataloguing prices of the most basic ingredients. The history on them makes clear that a lot of these stories round off to noise; people noticing things going up and not noticing when they stay flat or decline. Take for example eggs: they’re up about 20% over the last two years… but they’re down from 15 years ago, because eggs have (mostly) stayed really cheap for a long time. And that’s not down in inflation adjusted dollars, it’s just down.

mikeyouse 3y ago
Yep. You need to go back to ~1996 to get to a 2x increase in cost of food at home: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d3aL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d3aL Though as a general rule people notice acceleration not speed, so the big pandemic bump is clearly more impactful than a slower increase.
- rileymat2 3y ago
  Is there a stat that tracks discount sale prices? I typically craft my purchases around what is discounted, but those “seem” dramatically worse than the general price increases.
bombcar 3y ago
Eggs around here were as low as 29 cents (during an egg price war, to be fair, but normal prices were well below a buck) and during whatever egg crisis there was recently peaked at nearly $4 a dozen. Both were the same "cheapest eggs in the store" though the local farm-raised eggs had a much smaller increase (maybe from $4.29 to $4.79). Since then the cheapest eggs have come back down somewhat. The problem is statistics count averages or price on a certain day, etc, people remember the _highest_ price they paid recently.

andy99 3y ago

I wonder. There was an article I saw recently about the nutritional content of either grains or vegetables going down over time. Anecdotally a lot of meat is worse, either full of water or otherwise lower quality. There was something a few years ago about butter quality going down, reportedly because of how cows were being fed. Anyway you see my point. Even basic ingredients are subject to the same kinds of -flations. "Continuous improvement" is constantly ratcheting down quality.

armchairhacker 3y ago

I'd like to know if there's any way whole foods can get enshittified. Some people say there's a real difference in health between non-organic and organic foods, others say it's BS. Anecdotally, some people say the meat and produce from places like and Walmart are worse than those from places like Whole foods, and generics are worse than brand names, even ignoring organic vs. non-organic; but I wonder how much is placebo, and how much is a real difference in nutrition. I assume that some products are literally the same thing repackaged, but others are different in ways that matter. There's also things which are supposed to be monitored by the FDA, like using pesticides and injecting meat with saline. My understanding is that the FDA is pretty strict in the US but who knows? Foods like: - Fresh fruit and vegetables - Frozen fruit and vegetables - Canned fruit and vegetables - Eggs - Dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt) - Grains (oats, rice) - Fresh meat and fish - Frozen meat and fish - Canned meat and fish (e.g. canned chicken, tuna) - Ground meat - Seasoning - Olive oil, butter

lozenge 3y ago
From what I understand, if you want to farm in a way that prioritises taste and quality over cost, you need to get that Organic certification. Otherwise, consumers will not pay for it. Meanwhile, you could also chase the Organic certification to fetch a higher price, but not care about the taste... then it's up to the buyer (mainly the grocery store) whether you reached their quality bar. I think there's a big regional variation as well. By the time the avocados get from CA to NJ, maybe the different offerings don't taste that different. But the opposite might be true for another foodstuff.
hammock 3y ago
USDA* not FDA You are only standing at the edge of the rabbit hole friend. Don’t be afraid to take a few steps in
jonatron 3y ago
New seed varieties made for growth and shelf life, greenhouse grown instead of field grown
- 3y ago