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U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

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Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#81

Post by lotsofpulp »

danShumway wrote: post #76
lotsofpulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's too hard to change habits in the short term I don’t see how. Written and video recipes available for free online. Instant pot and a couple other items cost $100? Time and effort are the remaining ingredients.

Time, food variety, and cleanup. Most people don't want the majority of their food to come from an instant pot and they don't want to think about things like grocery shopping. There's a level of skill and management involved in making your own food even if you are talking about extremely simple recipes, and it becomes invisible once you get used to it, but I suspect some people don't have those skills or habits built…

> but I do think it's something that can be difficult even for neurotypical people if they're not used to it.

Based on the percent of people who were able to do it before there were fast food restaurants everywhere, I think people will manage to figure it out.

The only reason they have not is due to lack of incentive (sufficiently cheap food at restaurants).

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#82

Post by eatsyourtacos »

cheriot wrote: post #17

Before the doomers run away with this thread, real spending on food prepared at home is down . This is more than off set by increased spending at restaurants. This returns to the pre-covid trends.

What in the absolute hell are you talking about?

Groceries are up easily 20-30% over the last few years. Some items more, some have stayed kind of stable.

It's ludicrous.

Would anyone reading this say their grocery bill has gone down since 4 years ago??

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#83

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

bluedino wrote: post #40

Pizza night is $40 now (two pizzas and a breadstick-side), compared to $20 The bucket of chicken meal at KFC is $36 McDonald's combo meals are $11 instead of $6 Lattes seem to be $2 more Still spending almost double a week on groceries than I was 2 years ago

>Pizza night is $40 now (two pizzas and a breadstick-side), compared to $20

Honestly domino's is pretty good and is still $8 for a large carry out.

Honestly if you're okay with spending $40 for whatever pizza you like, it becomes redicously worth it to just cook it. Pizza is one of the cheapest foods to make.

For comparison I spend 10-20% more over the same time period in Virginia for groceries. It is certainly not double, not even close. But eating out has gotten rediculous.

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#84

Post by chiefalchemist »

paxys wrote: post #38

> Real total food spending increased 11.4 percent in 2021 and 3.4 percent in 2022, driven by higher FAFH spending (up 19 percent in 2021 and 8 percent in 2022). Real FAH spending increased by 4 percent in 2021 but decreased by 2 percent in 2022. FAH = food at home FAFH = food away from home So, eating out is killing our wallets. Not really a surprise considering "dollar menu" items at McDonalds now cost $6 and a half…

I'm not so sure about this.

Cooking at home means going to the supermarket (or going online and ordering from the SM). If you have to cook for more than yourself, then you probably need to also put sometime into planning the meals for the week. And then of course there's the time to cook the meals. There's also cleanup. Also, let's not forget that there are plenty of people who never really learned to cook and now fear the kitchen.

Sure meals from the frozen section are an option but they're maybe only slightly less expensive than FAFH.

In any case, FAH takes time *and* effort. Perhaps not a lot of time + effort - and habit - but enough to make it easy to say, "F** it. Let's FAFH..."

If FAFH establishments start closing, local towns are going to turn into ghosts towns. FAFH is about the only thing left in a lot of cases; aside from web dispensaries.

People should have been FAH'ing long ago for health reasons and that obviously didn't workout at all.

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#85

Post by laidoffamazon »

cheriot wrote: post #66
laidoffamazon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see a better understanding of why American HN commenters, a cohort that likely makes 2-3x the typical compensation of an ordinary American, wants to catatastrophize a pretty decent to great American economy. The comments are literally data being "refuted" with anecdotes.

Agreed. There's a lot of smart people on HN, but the economics commentary is consistently not great.

Might be the political characteristics of the tech worker crowd. Big split between the libertarians who have claimed high inflation even when America had objectively low inflation (usually as a justification for crypto), the conspiratorial far-right that thinks that the administration is falsifying economic data because they want to end democracy, and the far-left aligned folks that have to say the economy is bad for in-group signaling even though none of them are acting like the economy is all too bad.

Consumers spending more on food because they're eating out more because they can afford it isn't a sign of a bad economy in any way.

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#86

Post by thereisnospork »

pkulak wrote: post #58
paxys wrote: post #38

> Real total food spending increased 11.4 percent in 2021 and 3.4 percent in 2022, driven by higher FAFH spending (up 19 percent in 2021 and 8 percent in 2022). Real FAH spending increased by 4 percent in 2021 but decreased by 2 percent in 2022. FAH = food at home FAFH = food away from home So, eating out is killing our wallets. Not really a surprise considering "dollar menu" items at McDonalds now cost $6 and a half…

Constant out-of-home dinning isn't sustainable anyway, unless you massively underpay the staff, which isn't possible when unemployment is low. Hope everyone knows how to cook, at least a little bit. I don't know that we're going back.

It should be sustainable/economical though, at least for 'basic' or staple foods.

There are a lot of efficiencies a burger joint, for instance, should be able to employ that a personal kitchen can't. It probably won't be cheaper, but it ought to be some fraction of minimum wage * the time investment of diy cooking[0]. Or at least on that order.

[0] ~minimum wage (plus payroll and etc.) being fair pay for burger flipping, and being that a professional kitchen can maintain a much higher throughput per person (e.g. a pro burger flipper in a real kitchen can probably make 10+ burgers in the time I would take to make one)

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#87

Post by angmarsbane »

soperj wrote: post #22
swatcoder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I think there's also an ongoing century long shift in "modern" culture that makes classical economics food "baskets" unrepresentative. Excepting wellness geeks, nobody who participates in "modern" culture lives on classical staples of grains, produce, dairy, and affordable cuts of meat. As a hardline economist in academia, you can say that those are what matter to poverty or starvation because people will eventu…

> The cultural traditions that made simple foods practical have been lost from many families and those never-learned recipes and habits don't just restore themselves to people overnight when times get tough. That strikes a chord. How do you fix this piece though?

Bring back tactile classes to public school, like home economics.

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#88

Post by conjecTech »

I have been fascinated by the price of oats recently. The 8lb box of oats I have been buying from Amazon for several years suddenly went from $15 to $32 in July. Paying $4/lb for grain feels excessive given that meat is cheaper than that in most of the country. I went looking for an explanation expecting there to been some huge crop loss, but found oat future prices have been relatively stable at around $0.15/lb. I looked at other prices, and whole foods even charges $3.6/lb for their store brand and something like $2.5/lb for bulk goods. I distinctly remember buying the same bulk oats for $0.59/lb in 2017, right around the time Amazon bought whole foods. And oat futures prices are only up about 30% since then.

I think retailers would like us to believe these increases are just them passing through rising commodity prices from inflation, but I am increasingly convinced it is collusion, either implicit or explicit, to increase margins. The most compelling evidence this is happening seems to be Costco, which generally sets its prices at near-fixed 15% markup hasn't experienced nearly the same increases and is selling similar products at less than half of that price.

I think the entire thing is indicative of a growing disconnect between the cost of commodities and what consumers are paying due to increased consolidation and collusion among retailers.

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#89

Post by soperj »

tayo42 wrote: post #53
soperj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cultural traditions that made simple foods practical have been lost from many families and those never-learned recipes and habits don't just restore themselves to people overnight when times get tough. That strikes a chord. How do you fix this piece though?

It's easier then ever to learn to cook. Go on YouTube

What are you having for dinner tonight?

Re: U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before (Inflation Adjusted)

#90

Post by cheriot »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #82
cheriot wrote: post #17

Before the doomers run away with this thread, real spending on food prepared at home is down . This is more than off set by increased spending at restaurants. This returns to the pre-covid trends.

What in the absolute hell are you talking about? Groceries are up easily 20-30% over the last few years. Some items more, some have stayed kind of stable. It's ludicrous. Would anyone reading this say their grocery bill has gone down since 4 years ago??

That's not what this is saying. It's a long term shift in food spending to restaurants.
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