Rising food prices hit every supermarket aisle putting pressure on low-income families
The price of food has continued to rise, with new data showing that every supermarket aisle has been hit by hikes, not just fruit and vegetables.
The soaring prices have led researchers to call on the federal government to help subsidise growers, amid concerns it’s costing some lower socioeconomic families 40% of their income to buy a week’s worth of healthy food.
Comparing the cost of 28 staples between June 2020 and June 2022, researchers from Deakin University’s Institute for Health Transformation found that the price of lettuce and broccoli had the biggest jump, increasing by more than 100% within two years.
In 2020 a head of lettuce would have cost $2.50, but now costs more than $5, and broccoli jumped from $5.90 to $11.90 a kilogram.
Tomatoes saw the third-highest jump, going from $6.90 to $9.90 a kilogram over two years, but it wasn’t just fruit and vegetables, with Christina Zorbas, a researcher at Deakin University, calling the increase a “crisis”.
“Dairy produce, yoghurt and cheese, meat – chicken and mince, bread, pasta and rice … have gone up 5% to 10%,” she said.
Zorbas said every aisle is being affected by large price hikes – except for junk food. The price of some pasta like spaghetti increased by 13%, potatoes went up 12% and milk went up 9%. The research showed a litre of olive oil went from $12 to $16.
“The consumer price index that got released in the last quarter shows fruit and vegetables went up 7% across the board everything else went up 4%,” Zorbas said.
“You see the disparity between healthy and less healthy, takeaway foods have gone up by 1%.”
There were a few vegetables that bucked the trend – the price of carrot, onion and sweet corn stayed steady.
Some fruits decreased in price such as oranges, which
Read more on theguardian.com
