Why feeding a family has become so expensive

SALT LAKE CITY — The latest consumer price index by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 0.2% increase in food costs between June and July. May to June saw the same increase, making food prices 2.2% higher than a year ago.

Many factors can contribute to the prices consumers see at the grocery store, so there is no single reason behind the price hike in recent years. According to Nerdwallet, food has seen a price increase of 26% since 2020 due to increased production, labor and fuel costs, global events, extreme weather and diseases affecting key crops and livestock. Food companies may also increase prices to sustain or boost profitability and combat unpredictable circumstances.

Eggs saw a 5.5% bump in price in the last month alone as egg companies still face the repercussions of a deadly bird flu. "The current strain of bird flu, which scientists are calling highly pathogenic avian influenza, originated in Michigan in 2022. The strain led the nation's largest producer of fresh eggs, Cal-Maine Foods, to slaughter 1.6 million hens after finding cases at its plant in Texas," per CBS News.

What consumers need to understand is that "when inflation is coming down, that doesn't mean prices are coming down. Prices are still growing. They're just growing somewhat more slowly than they had in the last couple of years," Phil Dean, chief economist at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, told the Deseret News.

A video posted initially on TikTok in June went viral on social media after a Walmart customer showed how much the price of a grocery order had changed in just two years. He said he was going through his Walmart app order history when he found an old order.

"Forty-five items cost $126. A whole month of groceries just for me, basically." He clicked the "re-order all button" to see how much the same groceries would cost today. "Now, this order of 45 items for one month would have cost $418," he added.

"The good news again is prices for grocery food, at least, are growing more slowly, but they're still growing off these high prices," Dean said. But, "it's not just the higher food prices, it's (also) the challenge of whether our wages are keeping up with all of those cost increases. For some people, they have, and for other people, they haven't," he added. "That's where people are feeling an impact in a day-to-day budget."

Inflation and food prices: Trump vs. Harris

Most Americans feel strained by the effect of inflation on their wallets, with 62% of Americans in a recent Pew Research Survey claiming that it's a top-ranking issue facing the country. In 2023, inflation on food reached its highest since the turn of the century, the highest of that year, hitting 10.1%, a number not seen since the 1980s.

"During the last federal election on Nov. 3, 2020, food inflation was running at just 3.9% annually," per Yahoo Finance. "Fast forward to March 2024, and the latest data shows food prices have risen a whopping 25.8% since then."

Former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump has been very outspoken about the Biden-Harris administration's take on combatting inflation. Vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently supported a federal ban on grocery price gouging to combat American food prices.

"Vice President Harris knows that rising food prices remain a top concern for American families. Many big grocery chains that have seen production costs level off have nevertheless kept prices high and have seen their highest profits in two decades. While some food companies have passed along these savings, others still have not," the Harris campaign said in a statement, according to ABC News.

From his perspective, Dean added that he hadn't been made aware of any "massive increases in net profit margins showing up in the grocery sector" and that he does have concerns about price controls and how that would work.

Without knowing Harris' policy in detail, he said it's important to understand "that price controls can create some significant economic distortion and create a misallocation of resources in society."

No guidelines have been clarified yet on how Harris would go about banning grocery price gouging, but the statement added that in the first 100 days of office, she would set "clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can't unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries."

In response, Trump posted on social media, "If you think things are expensive now, they will get 100 times WORSE if Kamala gets four years as President," adding that her desire to set prices is relatable to communist laws.

Trump also criticized President Joe Biden after his interview with CNN in May, where Biden said, "No president's had the run we've had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was 9% when I came to office, 9%."

The inflation rate was nearly 1.4% when Trump left office, and Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. "The Biden-era inflation rate did peak at about 9.1% – but that peak occurred in June 2022, after Biden had been president for more than 16 months. The March 2024 inflation rate, the most recent available rate at the time Biden made these comments, was about 3.5%, up from about 3.2% the month prior," CNN clarified post-interview.

"His inflation was 9.0%," Trump said in a video posted on X. "That's a tax on the American people."

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