I don't really find that all that surprising. There's a fair bit of elasticity in food spending. If the beef is too expensive, you get the chicken. If restaurant prices rise, you eat at home. Eat less breakfast cereal and more oatmeal (better for your health anyway). For that matter, just eat less.
Some people genuinely have no elasticity in their food budgets, and they're getting really deeply screwed. But on average, food is a lower percentage of people's overall budgets, falling from 17% to 10% over the past 50 years. And that's taking into account that people are eating more, because they can afford to.
So they cut where the flexibility is. They can make changes to their food budget without drastically altering their lifestyle. It's not the 1950s any more. Agriculture does so much more with so much less that we now have an obesity problem, not a starvation problem.
Certainly that's no comfort for the people already pushed to the limit. But that's a whole different problem: their share of wages has declined in real terms. The poorest people are always at subsistence levels unless something is done to compensate, like a minimum wage or food subsidy that matches inflation. It won't be fixed by telling the middle class to give up entertainment luxuries or convenience luxuries rather than food luxuries -- i.e. switching to foods they like slightly less.
I'm in this group. There isn't really a better and cheaper alternative to streaming for entertainment imo. But cooking is a better and cheaper alternative ative to eating out, so that's where I've been saving money.
Some people genuinely have no elasticity in their food budgets, and they're getting really deeply screwed. But on average, food is a lower percentage of people's overall budgets, falling from 17% to 10% over the past 50 years. And that's taking into account that people are eating more, because they can afford to.
So they cut where the flexibility is. They can make changes to their food budget without drastically altering their lifestyle. It's not the 1950s any more. Agriculture does so much more with so much less that we now have an obesity problem, not a starvation problem.
Certainly that's no comfort for the people already pushed to the limit. But that's a whole different problem: their share of wages has declined in real terms. The poorest people are always at subsistence levels unless something is done to compensate, like a minimum wage or food subsidy that matches inflation. It won't be fixed by telling the middle class to give up entertainment luxuries or convenience luxuries rather than food luxuries -- i.e. switching to foods they like slightly less.