Groceries prices continue to rise. A year ago you paid 55 cents for a cucumber, now it costs almost a euro. Greek yogurt, coffee pads and soup have also become considerably more expensive. We bought the same stuff as a year ago, put the receipts side by side and were shocked by the differences.
We compared the price of items that just about everyone buys at the supermarket every week, such as soup, cheese, brown rolls, toilet paper and chocolate milk.
This week we filled our shopping cart with exactly the same products as a year ago in September, at the same supermarket.
Especially cucumbers (73 percent more expensive) and coffee pads (24 percent) are the outliers. For toilet paper and a bag of M&Ms you pay 17 percent more than a year ago.
Research agency GfK also looked at the prices of groceries in the past year. Every month, the researchers filled a shopping cart with 55 products that just about everyone has in their pantry or refrigerator. “In almost a year, these articles have increased in price by an average of about 16 percent,” concludes Norman Buysse of GfK.
“We pay a lot more for toilet paper, butter, meat and oil, in particular.”
“We pay much more for toilet paper and kitchen rolls, butter and other dairy products, meat and oil and fats, those prices have risen faster than the average,” says the researcher.
Consumers now spend on average almost a fifth more to fill their shopping cart than eleven months ago.
“Minced meat requires a lot of energy.”
How is it possible that everything has become so much more expensive? “That is due to scarcity,” says Buysse. “There is a shortage of many things. Raw materials and energy are also a lot more expensive than a year ago. There is also a shortage of that.”
“For example, minced meat has an intensive production chain that requires a lot of energy”, he mentions as an example. “Furthermore, animal feed is needed to feed the cows, and that has also quickly become more expensive. You can see all of that in the price.”
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) also released gloomy figures on Friday. Daily life has become an average of 17.1 percent more expensive in September, reports. Never before has inflation soared.
“People are more likely to choose private labels.”
A month earlier, prices on an annual basis still rose by an average of 13.7 percent. Inflation has been very high for some time because the prices for gas and electricity have risen sharply. But those higher costs are also increasingly affecting food prices.
Research agency GfK notices that consumers are living more frugally and are adjusting their purchasing behaviour. “People, for example, more often opt for private labels, or they go shopping across the border, in Germany or Belgium, where it is cheaper,” says Buysse. “And they leave items they don’t necessarily need.”