UK food prices on track to rise by 50% since start of cost of living crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/04/uk-food-prices-rise-cost-of-living-crisis-beef-olive-oil-inflation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Posted by topotaul
UK food prices on track to rise by 50% since start of cost of living crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/04/uk-food-prices-rise-cost-of-living-crisis-beef-olive-oil-inflation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Posted by topotaul
38 Comments
More.
The price of Beef mince and most veggies would suggest otherwise
I’m very comfortable in terms of food spending not affecting me, but even I have been like wtf post-pandemic / Brexit when I look at many prices.
I can imagine how it is for people for whom a food is a significant part of their monthly budget.
It’s a really significant rise. And the problem is, it won’t come down. So salaries need to catch up.
I think we need to rename it to the cost of living era
I used to always love the UK for how cheap our groceries were.. you would go to other countries like Spain or the US and be like ‘how much??’
Now we don’t even have that.. the NHS isn’t fit for purpose either.. wat on earth has happened to this shit country!
Which cost of living crisis?
I can’t tell when one ends and the next one starts
Cost of living crisis? What one!? There is a new one every three months at this point.
A can of Baked Beans is what I tend to go off for inflation. I’d say 2018 you’d get a can for 70p, now it’s £1.40. Heinz are taking the piss. £3-4 for Ketchup!
M&S cookie at £3.25 up from £1.75. So some things are still obscenely more expensive
I remember that I used to get a bag of Whey protein which could comfortably last me 1 or 2 months costing around £35. now its over double that!
Compare prices now vs pre-covid and it’s ludicrous how much things cost. Not to mention at the same time they’ve reduced the quantity/size and used shittier ingredients to claw back profits, so we’re left with shitty, expensive food.
But remember young people. It’s all the coffee and Netflix that are stopping you from getting houses. NOTHING ELSE
People are barely suriving, I dont know how people can manage another increase
The phrase ‘cost of living crisis’ proper winds me up. It’s corporate greed, plain and simple
Wonderful. I didn’t want to eat decently anymore anyway.
I can’t stand all these fucking buzzwords to describe our falling living conditions
“Cost of living crisis” makes it sound ephemeral but this is just the latest round of managed decline for most people living in the UK.
I’m still seething that chocolate chips for baking used to be about 50p four years ago. They’re now £1.50. I don’t understand who’s buying them at this price. They’re also shrinking the weight, and the prices still go up. It’s a fucking scam.
I used to buy a Nice rump steak (195g) for 2.79£ a few years ago 🙁
Anyone saying they’re unaffected are the same people saying their unaffected by petrol prices as they only spend £20…
The UK has had historically very low food prices in comparison to most Western countries.
We have long had an extremely competitive grocery market with profit margins at our supermarkets being very low, and a long term squeeze on the profitability of domestic farming as a result – and all this whilst pushing (rightly) for better and better welfare and supply line standards.
In many respects we’ve been spoilt as a nation, and so we expect and demand continued cheap food. But it’s looking unsustainable in the 21st century increasingly.
Hence the initial shrinkflation – manufacturers knew they’d be punished by the consumer for rising prices so they slowly reduced the portion sizes. But that was only effective for a few years and more recently we’re just seeing above inflation price rises.
I don’t know where this ends. If you travel to France for example fruit, veg and meat are considerably more expensive still – but they are also higher quality, noticeably. It’s a cultural thing – the French care deeply about quality, the Brits care about cost.
My worry is that if we want to still have relatively cheap groceries we’ll be forced into the US mold where food is cheap because it’s TERRIBLE quality produced in horrendous conditions and at significant environmental cost.
Feels like something big is gonna happen in our lifetime in terms of society, this cannot continue as is. The old world way of living does not work anymore and there will be a breaking point for sure
50%? Literally everything doubled in a few years and it’s getting worse. 0/10 ragebait.
My fridge is getting emptier and emptier because i cannot afford to eat
genuine question, when/how does this end? what happens when a lot of people just can’t afford basics anymore?
We are well above pandemic pricing in many cases with very little explanation for why.
Just so you know the supermarkets are screwing you not the producers. We have seen our price for beef drop from £7 a kg down to £5.95 in 12 months, yet they have only increased prices in the supermarkets.
With the rising costs we are facing its looking seriously unsustainable
Didn’t the cost of living crisis begin with David Cameron and the Age of Austerity?
In already faced with the decision to either skip breakfast or fast for one day wtf is wrong with this country
I was recently made disabled enough that I lost 6 jobs in under a year but PIP wont recognise my symptoms because I have 2 cats. I am struggling to afford value brands..im making sure I stretch all my shopping over a week which means I have freeze everything I cook into batches. I do this while being disabled..my daughter in law is dying in hospital and my partner is away looking after her while I crawl up and down stairs. Social services got invokved with my daughter in laws choldren saying she wasnt looking after them despite the fact she has brain cancer brain tumour taxamaplosis and hiv which all were effecting her cognitive functions. She came from ukraine, where the children have shrapnal wounds. She missed her immigration paperwork dead line because of her health and despite being safeguarded by social services they told her theyre removing the children without even a court case and the NHS just left a letter on the daughters bed saying she is going to be paying for her treatment. During her stay the hospital refused basic information requests. Had 2 weeks synptoms as a diagnosis on her medical notes despite not talking to the family. I am sat here crying my heart out that in every single level they are failing basic care. Now I’ve just been told that the daughter was refused an mri scan because theyre understaffed yet other people are getting treated. And a nurse has told my partner that the daughter isnt going to make it. Ive never felt to embarrassed and ashamed of this country. We can’t afford to eat we are facing homelessness and we are losing our children. We used to work 70 to 80 hour treks for 20 years ..Ive been on holiday once, and now we can’t eat anything. The only aspect of life keeping me going to be there for my partner.
When did it ever end? I don’t recall wages rising to high enough to match or prices ever coming back down.
If you wanna have a sob, look at your bank statements around 2009, if you have access to them.
With all the stories I am seeing out of the US wheat / corn belt and SE Asia on urea and nitrogen fertiliser shortages, adding on a very dry March out in seppo land too, then there is going to be a real impact on corn /wheat / rice and soy bean yields.
AS those four drive a lot of the base pricing for a lot of staples and of course dairy / meat production too, there’s a lot of inflation coming in late autumn / winter of this year
I’m gonna have to resort to eating people then I’m afraid.
Which cost of living crisis? I thought it was just ongoing, like nothing goes down in price, so it normally goes up.
The cost of living crisis does not exist for the wealthy, remember that.
Can you call it a crisis when it’s been going on for years? Brexit, COVID, Trump…almost every 5 years something comes along to fuck things up and then we’re left holding the bag while a handful of filthy rick fuckheads walk away with double, triple, or even more of their wealth.
Nobody will protest en-mass about it despite us being on an almost constant downward trend since about 2010.
Of course they are, haulage firms are already adding fuel surcharges and that’s only going to make it’s way to the consumers. The slow boil is coming
Food is still ridiculously cheap. Anyone saying they can’t afford to eat is just straight up lying or stupid. It’s usually just the case that they don’t want to eat frugally.
We literally just had veg being sold for 4p. A kilo of rice is still 52p.
Council tax is the only real problem what with the compounding interest of 5% every year. Scroungers don’t have to pay it of course.