Everything on the shelves is becoming more expensive, but what are you surprised about? Readers reacted en masse to this question and mentioned many products that were unexpectedly much more expensive. “Every week I look up at the receipt, which always shows a higher final amount for approximately the same groceries.”
“Everything is too expensive, you are almost punished for being alive”, Desiree responds frustrated to our question. The price increases are not just a few cents, a price increase from fifty cents to whole euros in a few months is experienced by her and many other readers as unprecedented.
But the claim that ‘almost all raw materials seem to come from Ukraine’ also raises question marks.
“My salary does not increase at that rate. Not to mention the fixed costs.”
The place where people are most surprised about the price tag is the supermarket. We are confronted with this almost every day. “The weekly shopping, not normal. And my salary does not increase at that rate”, Miranda says. “Not to mention the fixed costs.”
Meat products, toilet paper and frying fat are often mentioned. But other striking items such as cat litter and latex gloves are also higher.
What are you looking at? This is what our readers said
- 250 grams of smoked bacon strips for 4.15 euros
- Three liters of liquid frying fat for 12.99 euros
- A box of eggs for 3.49 euros
- Latex gloves from 3.95 euros to 9.95 euros
- Meat products: an ounce of chicken fillet from 1.50 euros to 3.45 euros
- Baking pistols: from 0.98 cents to 1.40 euros
- Dog food: 0.95 cents and a day later 1.05 cents
- Toilet paper: from 5.50 euros to 6.29 euros
- Cleaning vinegar: five liters 1.85 euros, now 2.86 euros
- Freezer ice creams: first around 42 cents now 79 cents per bag
- Cat litter: from 8 euros to 11 euros
- Red bell pepper: 2.89 euros each
- A jar of Calvé Peanut butter creamy: almost 4.50 euros
- An ounce of eel: 12.50 euros
- Organic herbal tea: from 0.99 cents to 1.29 euros.
Are the countries around us also so affected by price increases, Chantal wonders.
Some readers have already done their shopping across the border, but a visit to Belgium or Germany does not seem to pay off. “Except for spirits, I found it quite disappointing in Germany,” Guido reports.
It is much too far away for us people from Brabant, but in Spain the groceries are much cheaper, John writes to us from the south. “All foodstuffs are significantly cheaper. The sunflower oil, which is scarce with us, is also almost half cheaper here than in the Netherlands.”
“I think it’s more of a thing to earn a lot in a short period of time.”
But there are also substantial differences between different supermarkets, according to an anonymous reader.
“At Coop I pay 1.70 euros for 12 sandwiches. At Nettorama ten sandwiches cost 0.99 cents. A box of eggs costs 3.70 euros at Coop and 2.60 euros at Nettorama. That is only two products, but apparently one supermarket suffered from the war and the other not. I think it is more something to earn a lot in a short time.”
It’s better to look for something that hasn’t become more expensive in the store, a reader notes. Isabel does have a tapped answer to that: “The coin for your shopping cart.”