Does the BLS match your budget?
CPI Food Index Levels at Home vs Away
Home vs Away Food Percent Changes
- Since January of 2021, Food at Home is up 23.7 percent
- Since January of 2023, Food at Home is up 3.6 percent
- Since January of 2021, Food Away from Home is up 28.0 percent
- Since January of 2023, Away from Home is up 11.0 percent
The above chart does not count expected tips that have skyrocketed.
Where Are People Actually Spending Food Dollars?
US Department of Agriculture Research shows spending on food away from from home surpassed spending on food at home in 2023 and the trend has accelerated.
In 2023, U.S. consumers spent an average of 11.2 percent of their disposable personal income on food, the same percentage as 2022. Disposable personal income is the amount of money consumers have left to spend or save after paying taxes.
Although the share of disposable income spent on food remained the same as 2022, the share spent on food at home decreased to 5.3 percent from 5.6 percent in 2022, and the share spent on food away from home grew to 5.9 percent from 5.6 percent in 2022. This shift indicates that consumers’ preferences for dining out and buying prepared meals grew as disposable personal income rose in 2023.
Those are 2023 numbers, but the Department of Agriculture has a detailed data download through 2024 at the above link.
My charts are through 2024.
Percent of Food Budget Spent at Home vs Away
BLS Percentage Weights in December 2024
- Food: 13.691
- Food at Home: 8.043
- Food Away from Home: 5.64
USDA Actual Spending Weights (Holding Food at 13.691 Percent)
- Food at Home: 5.68
- Food Away from Home: 8.01
July 2025 BLS Month-Over-Month Numbers
- Food at Home: -0.12
- Food Away from Home: 0.28
- Food and Beverage: 0.00
BLS Food and Beverage Calc = (((8.043 / 13.691) * -0.12) + ((5.64 / 13.691) * 0.28))) = 0.0448 (Note: BLS rounded this to 0.0)
USDA Calc = (((5.68/ 13.691) * -0.12) + ((8.01 / 13.691) * 0.28))) = 0.1140
That’s just a bit over a tenth of a percent. But it’s been going on month after month since 2003, albeit minimally that early.
Things radically accelerated in 2021.
Bogus CPI Numbers
This bogus BLS food calculation is nowhere near as big as missing homeownership data from the CPI.
The BLS does not count flood, fire, or hurricane insurance for anything other than the personal contents of the structure.
Nor does the BLS count property taxes.
Poor Measures of Inflation
Realistically, the CPI is a very poor measure of inflation.
Alternate measures like Truflation are also a joke because they are based on more timely measures of the same garbage.
Truflation measures of rent are more timely than BLS data, but their alleged “market-based” numbers are ridiculous.
No one factors in home prices at all. This is on the basis that homes are a capital expense.
To the BLS, Truflation, and economists in general, only “consumer” inflation matters.
In the real world, inflation matters.
Related Posts
July 31, 2025: No Improvement in the Fed’s Preferred Measure of Inflation for 8 Months
Core PCE is up 2.8 percent from a year ago, no change in 8 months.
Q: Does the PCE count property taxes or insurance?
A: Of course not , silly, for the same ridiculous reasons as the CPI.
Supposedly, only consumer expenses matter and neither property taxes nor insurance are consumer expenses.
August 11, 2025: Over Half the US Has Major Stress Over the Price of Food
Are you stressed out over food?
Is Homeowners Insurance Understated in the CPI? Shop Around!
On August 11, asked Is Homeowners Insurance Understated in the CPI? Shop Around!
If you own a home, what percent of your income is spent on your homeowners’ insurance? Under 1/2 of 1 percent?
Not Counted
The BLS does not include insurance in the CPI as the average person understands insurance.
Nor does the BLS include property taxes or home prices directly.
The CPI as a measure of inflation is very understated.
I will do a post on needed BLS changes later this week.
Mish, you continue to please as you choose VERY important subjects for your daily writings. I have five different people, family and not family, who in the past week complained about how their insurance rates have risen DRAMATICALLY.
One thing we know for sure: POLITICIANS do not touch BIG PHARMA or INSURANCE COMPANIES and they both get away with murder.
“Are you stressed out over food?”
“UK government advisers have urged deep cuts to the country’s cattle and sheep numbers to reduce the overall levels of methane emissions.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/push-cut-livestock-climate-goals-due-burping-farting-worries-uk-farmers-ecologists
So called sustainable farming does induce stress. How many farms are going to have to disappear to reach net zero and who is going to be left starving, to reach that goal?
I’ve seen inflation mostly in services and insurance cost. Now, getting my lawn mower serviced at the end of cutting season runs $300 plus depending on blade replacement etc. I just paid $5400 for a dental bridge. God help you if you need a plumber! I’d add property taxes and income taxes. Ironically my income goes up, requiring more tax but the increase in income doesn’t cover the additional expenses.
Clearly, cutting interest rates is going to fix these problems!
– We produce relative importance of components in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).
> Who is “We” and How do they “Determine” Relative Importance? Weighted Average? Who determines what weight for each? Does this weight ever change? How so? How often? By Who exactly?
– We produce relative importance of components in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W).
> See Above
– We produce relative importance of components in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
> See Above
I’m not getting a warm and fuzzy feel for the Who (if unelected so Who Chose Them?) What (Way more items available, and some listed could be broken down much further imo), Why (Who determines why and why do they and what prompts this to occur? Every occurrence uses the “Exact Same Criteria” AND Always Has? Sometimes? When it makes sense to only? Is it padded in any way by % or a formula?
– The relative importance of a component is its expenditure or value weight expressed as a percentage of all items within an area or an area within the U.S. > See Above as to Who, Why, When etc.
– When the value weights are collected they represent average annual expenditures, and their relative importance ratios show approximately how the index population distributes expenditures among the components. Relative importance ratios represent an estimate of how consumers would distribute their expenditures as prices change over time.
> I see too many ambiguous verbiage used amongst these explanations of How It Works or doesn’t is more like it. Words like: Average, Weights, Relative, Ratios, Importance, Approximately, Estimate, Change, Over Time, ETC. Not exactly the warm and fuzzy words used when referring to “Meaningful Things” Just Saying…
– Relative importance ratios cannot be used as estimates of current spending patterns, changing consumer expenditures, because consumption patterns are influenced by factors other than price change. These factors include income, variations in climate (Meaning Simply “The Weather”), family size (Meaning Simply “Children”), and availability of new and different kinds of goods and services. (Meaning Simply “Variety”).
– Embracing the antonyms for urban allows us to appreciate the diversity of environments that exist beyond city boundaries. By understanding and using these contrasting terms, we can better articulate the differences between urban and non-urban landscapes, fostering a richer and more nuanced understanding of the world around us.
> Says the ones doing the picking of what they consider “antonyms”, what represents “diversity” So “They” can “Articulate” for US, what it means, in case we wanted to be told?
>> Simply not buying all this crap, and not a clear understanding of anything that’s discussed. A lot of what They Are Doing, but not Who exactly, and Why, When, Where, Prompted by, Elected people doing so? Way Too Many unanswered questions in this convoluted description of what, why, and how they are doing so exactly…
As someone who lives with (real) OCD, I have eaten almost exactly the same things – brands included – for decades, and mentally keeping track of pricing is second nature.
In 2019, I lived in a major city, commuted 1.5 hours each way to work, and ate away from home about 50% of the time. My lunch every day was the exact same order at the same nationally franchised place. The cost was $9.96. My weekly grocery run was also the same, and regardless of where I shopped, a very full cart would run me around $100.
Today, my life is completely different. I’m nomadic, work remotely, make about 10% less than I did then, and eat out very little, if at all. When I do eat out, the same meal I used to have for lunch at the same place as in 2019 will cost me between $19 – $21, depending on where I am. As for groceries, I made a small run yesterday: Two ribeye steaks from the “we need to sell these today – 50% off” section, a bag of fresh green beans, a pack of six boneless chicken thighs, a bag of Romaine, a pack of croutons, and a bottle of Ken’s Caesar dressing. No cart needed – I carried all of it in my hands. The total was around $40. A full cart identical to one I would buy in 2019 runs me around $200 to $250 easily.
And don’t get me started on quantity and quality. If you buy things like boxed mac and cheese, the quantity has decreased. The boxes are the same size, but the weight of the product is reduced by as much as 25% in some cases. And the quality of the ingredients has also been reduced – you can taste the difference.
Also, thanks to the internet, I can track the exact prices I paid for some things. I have ordered pizza dough from the same place in NY for years. I found my email receipt for an order of twenty 16-oz dough balls in April of 2020 – $69.95. Today: $150, but each one is only 15-oz, and the quality just isn’t the same.
Anyone shocked by this shouldn’t be. Dollars are a commodity just like meat and grains. If the supply of the former goes up relative to the latter, then they are worth less because their amount is “inflated,” and it will take more of them to trade. And the difference will always be passed to the consumer in some form – either directly by price or indirectly by reductions in quantity or quality. Why? Because that hurts less than cutting your employee numbers and/or reducing salaries.
The period between 2019 and today gives us a crystal clear real-time picture of what happens when a nation debases its currency.
FYI. i believe this outfit is ballmer from msft fame and fortune. https://usafacts.org/
So, why is ground turkey so expensive nowadays? It used to be a really cheap meat. Now a single pound is running $3.99 to $7.99, depending on if it is 85, 90, 93 or yes, even 99% fat free.
Covid broke the fear of increasing prices and the recovery gave sellers an excuse to adjust their pricing.
“Covid broke the fear of increasing prices and the recovery gave sellers an excuse to adjust their pricing.”
COVID deeply disrupted the manufacturing supply chain causing a supply/demand imbalance for a period of about 1 year. That imbalance allowed manufacturers to increase prices while they worked to get their factories fully operational again. Fox News, for purely political purposes, then began a concerted campaign to blame the resulting inflation on the policies of the Biden administration. This allowed almost every company, whether supply chain disrupted or not, to rapidly increase prices because they understood that the population would deflect the blame for the higher prices. Corporate profits and the stock market skyrocketed, and I personally made a bundle. Thank you Fox News!
Bird flu, maybe?
Unnecessary culling of bird flocks as a means of controlling this Bird flu, maybe?
I still buy sardines for $1 a can, same as before covid. Whole briskets at Sam’s are still between 4-5$ as well. Seems to me inflation is an opportunistic phenomena where ‘once everyone is talking about it,’ folks raise prices just to see if they can sell for more, not necessarily because their costs went up. I remember looking at used car prices a few years ago on Edmund’s TMV and dealer price was 3-4x the trade-in cost.
Why not everyone send this post to Trump at whitehouse.gov?
I am wondering where food delivery fits in?
Is that eating at home or away from home?
I could easily see the drift towards eating out caused by the surge of food deliveries everywhere.
Personally I find the weighting of food away from home astonishing.
It SHOULD be “eating out” category, right? Made outside and eaten inside the home.
I’d call food delivery “eating out”.
Putin and Trump will meet in Anchorage on Fri. If the wars between Russia & Ukraine and Israel & Hamas will end, will SPX dive or rise to 7K and above. Will the CPI rise or fall.
Neville Chamberlain was not available for comment. He and Lloyd George felt they had found a person they could do business with.
Likewise FDR at Yalta in reference to “Uncle Joe” Stalin.
In any event, now, is there a belief our coping with cybersecurity or elections will be safer or lower-cost, from Russian tampering, whatever political theatrics are performed in Anchorage? Trump has a track record of odd (yet ultimately inconclusive) behavior in face-to-face encounters, especially with dictators he has found charming.
WWII started on May 10 1940 when the Brits elected Churchill, an aggressive bulldog, a troublemaker, a media guy. 1000 days after WWII ended the British Empire was gone.
England declared war on Germany starting ww2.
1939 with Germany entering Poland.
Wrong.
The last away from home meals I had were on a camping trip.
Does buying a frozen pizza and cooking it at home count as at home?
I’m clearly not supporting the local restaurant industry as much as the statistics say I should. The Vietnamese one I liked closed during Covid. It was replaced by yet another Mexican one. The upscale place is $30 to feed two. Not worth it.
Yes, frozen pizza is cooking at home
poppycock
In 2035 Ice engines will be ban in Europe, Mercedes will be driving Full Speed into the wall. Where will VW, BMW & Mercedes go: to the US.
Woohoo!!! Another $1,000,000,000,000 has been added to the mountain.
$37,004,817,625,842.56
And the guy over @ Hersey Financial says that the latest net borrowing projections by the Treasury through CY ’25 will put the national debt at about:
$38.7T
Yikes! Thanks, UniParty / TACO!
If the BLS does not get anything right, maybe it is time to defund the BLS. If the data is so important the private sector will fill the need. I think we are asking the wrong question. Why are we funding such a half assed and weak data set?
I think the same way about the Federal Reserve. 90% of it could be shaved and follow the 2 year treasury rate set by the market. No drama and no politics; just an easy set of rules.
The private sector will absolutely not collect the data, only the statistink bureau can, however inaccurate that is. The alternative is flying blind.
The FED creature can be abolished. The difference is, the statistink bureau doesn’t make decisions, however, the FED e-cons do. As data driven, AI can replace them, too.
Dont we have an ADP job number?
I worked at BLS back in the 70’s. I’ve had the same idea, turning the programs private. They aren’t crooks but the agency was featherbedded and dysfunctional then. A really boring job and an agency filled with robotic bureaucrats.
Cost of eating out: price of meal + healthcare cost from such food.
Only the rich and the very poor can afford it.
We eat out a lot. Probably 70-30 eating out (I include takeout as eating out). That’s what happens with teens and working parents where its hard to get everyone together at the same time for meals (especially if you try and prep at home and then no one shows on time and your efforts are mostly wasted or cold etc).
So we are very sensitive to eating out prices and know exactly which places have Taco Tuesday with $1 Margaritas and other specials (Rib nights, $5 burger nights, half price happy hour food etc). It helps that the misses and I are old enough now (late 50s) that we can share a meal and an app (or extra side) and that’s all the food we need. The teens on the other hand, eat us out of house and home 🙁
We’re not at all typical in food purchases.
0% Away from home…maybe $200 per year tops.
0% Beverages…we drink water right from the ground…filtered through ground coffee in the morning.
0% Cereals and Bakery….we just don’t buy that stuff…nothing pre-made or over processed.
We budget $100 per person per week for food.
“Nor does the BLS count property taxes.”
My property tax just went up 25% over the previous year. (The Covid loot seems to have elevated a lot of local govt spending on the frivolous). Not inflation? What I got from local govt is as worthless this year as it was in the past, so don’t spew any “hedonics” on me.
So you don’t have roads, sewers and police protection? Must be awful.
Gas and vehicle taxes pay for the roads. I have septic tank and private water company. Virtually no police presence. I do check books out of the library, but that isn’t worth the thousands they suck from me.
My own situation is I am seeing massive price increases in insurance and property tax – increases on the order of several thousand dollars and 30% plus in the past 4 years. I am also seeing massive price increases in food, both at the grocery store and at restaurants.
I have no confidence the rate of these price increases has abated. I check the price of bacon at Costco about once a month and it is now $19.99 compared to $18.99 at the beginning the year and $17.99 a year ago. Bacon was selling for $12.99 4 years ago!!!!
Fortunately, these inflationary costs have been offset by my children becoming independent adults and living on their own. Otherwise, the hit on my budget would be real and very painful.
The government is lying about inflation. They and Wall Street will get away with the lies until the economy falls apart.
Yes, they are and have been for many decades.
It’s all about minimizing SS COLAs.
bingo. this man nails the true reason.
How much are you getting for 19.99?
BJs wholesale club (similar to Costco) has 3 lbs thick cut for $15 or so.
4 pound packages at Costco. Sometimes the cuts are quality, sometimes there is excessive fat. Bacon is more of a winter food for me so I check the price regularly hoping to take advantage of discounts.
of course not, insurance and property taxes are the real pain points for me. Beef prices are insane but it’s a manufactured scam. I was recently in a foreign country having amazing steaks at 1/4th the cost of beef here. Steak dinner for two with all the fixings was $30. That dinner here would easily be over $100.
The real question is what are prices going to be 5 years from now when 80 million boomers are collecting $2 trillion in social security and another $2 trillion in medical care. Anyone dare to answer that question?
Trump claims if the court overturns his tariffs social security and medicare will go bankrupt now. I think the fix is in and the doom and gloom is for real. Evidently, tariffs are now needed to save social security and medicare?
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/11/social-security-medicare-trump-tariffs
The Trump administration on Monday told a federal appellate court that overturning the president’s tariffs could lead to a 1929-style depression that would endanger federal benefits like Social Security and Medicare.
Tariffs, right now are 2.7% of Federal income
Corporate taxes are 9.1%
Individual income taxes 51.4%
Of course it is bizzaro day with Trump
Same with me, property taxes and insurance are huge pain points (on the plus side I just got my home insurance quote for next year and it only went up 1% so that’s a huge relief) and very large outlays of my budget.
The beef issue isn’t a scam. There is an actual shortage in the herds at the moment and have been for a couple of years now
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/u-s-cattle-inventory-smallest-in-73-years
Meanwhile we have ever more people trying to buy beef, including illegals so yeah the cost is going to skyrocket.
At least here in Florida you can buy non-USDA graded Mexican beef (or you could until the recent disease scare) for a nice discount. Sometimes it’s OK but often it’s tough so if you are buying steaks they have to be marinated in case they are tough.
There is a shortage of herds in the US but not all over the world. Why can’t beef be imported? Oh yeah, it’s a scam.
Why?
We were doing just fine, before the tariffs.
I keep telling you all that once the AI’s take over and robots do all the work, everything will be free.
What will you complain about then?
Food at home cost: $1,100B/Y. SNAP: $125/Y, almost 10%. The US gov transfers
$125B x 25% = $31B to Walmart via SNAP users. The poor are buying junk food. Inflation is caused by the medical care service, not tariffs. The food people eat stress them. Viscelar fat is caused by stress. Viscelar fat can cause a prostate cancer.
The CPI does not count items paid for by others (Medicare and SNAP) only items directly paid.
The PCE counts both. The result is Medical Care is overweight in the PCE vs the CPI.
Americans are specialists in visceral fat. How about canceling benefits depending on weight or substance use?
We can’t dictate what to pick, but we can and certainly should, give them a list to select from, and no exceptions exist.
So the list will be say Fruit (The standard varieties, stocked at most Supermarkets).
So the list will say Drinks ( The standard Nutritional Varieties stocked at most Supermarkets).
Etc.
Not hard, if it’s not on the list, then it won’t allow you to purchase it. Buy what’s allowed.
flying blind into the bright, new future…
[WH spokesperson] Leavitt confirms that monthly jobs reports may be suspended “until they can get the data and methodology in order”
Dear Leader will keep you fully informed – he is a genius at everything so no need for any more data or reporting.
Think exit strategy is a good idea now?
In 2022 350 million males and females reached age 65. A decade from today
only about 250 million. Many new immigrants will have more kids, don’t do abortion and stay married for life. They flipped what a few radical silent gen female influencers forced us to do since the sixties and the seventies.
“Realistically, the CPI is a very poor measure of inflation.”
No truer words have been spoken. However, I had a lady over on WSJ comments tell me straight up that there are ZERO issues with BLS CPI data. I told her to go talk to Mish & get set straight.
In Unrelated News:
Golden Age: Trump Cuts Illegal Alien Population by ‘Astonishing’ 1.6 Million Since Taking Office
Trump Cuts Illegal Population by ‘Astonishing’ 1.6 Million Since Taking Office
If 1.6 million people are gone, why is shelter CPI up? I thought the whole premise here was that “illegals” were driving up rent prices?
The simple answer like EVERYTHING else is the long awaited recession keeps getting pushed further back.
However, rents is certainly a lagging indicator & takes time to drop.
Anyone who thinks 8-10M illegals didn’t push up rent needs to have their head examined.
Also, we’d have to look at the current rate of increase vs 1, 2, 3, 4 years ago. Most likely, the current rise is below trend form 2 years ago.
But again, the simple answer is NO RECESSION, which will cure a lot of sticky inflation like rent.
As I said above, where exactly are these illegals renting? No normal landlord is renting these days to people who don’t have SSNs, pass credit checks, background checks etc.
Slum lords or flop houses (where 1 legal person rents and 10 illegals live with them) aren’t pushing up rents because no regular person wants to live there.
I’m not a landlord, but they sure as hell aren’t living on the streets homeless.
Most likely, persons here legally assists in some manner with renting their apartment / home.
Slop houses or not, again, there’s no WAY illegals have had no effect on rent. It’s just not possible just like it would be very hard to quantify the overall effect they’ve had on rent?
3%, 5%, 10%, 20%???
I would expect they have push up costs to food (which they definitely need), medical (which they get for free when they show at emergency rooms) etc far more than they have to rents. Possibly car insurance too (they are uninsured motorists).
So if 1.6 million people have been deported, why is food cost up? Do you see where this circular loop is going?
Why wouldn’t it be? Illegals shouldn’t be able to rent anything, or certainly not anything that regular people want to live in since any normal landlord (which you are one) wants a background check, credit info, SSN number etc which they’d never pass.
If the illegals can pay extra, which they probably do, then a lot of landlords are going to take the money.
For all I know, they’re requiring maybe a 2-3 month security deposit.
Again, it’s extremely unlikely that illegals effect on rent is zero or next to nothing.
Housing is a fairly scare resource which easily follows the laws of supply & demand.
That’s true but you live in Georgia as I recall. How many illegals are there in your area?
I mean in some areas it’s probably a lot and they push up things by a lot (hotel costs in NY and Chicago are very high now thanks to free government money renting rooms for illegals). But many other areas probably have next to no illegals or so few they don’t matter (ie they crash on the farm that they work on or 10 to a room so they aren’t using much housing).
Quite a few. There are enclaves ALL over Atlanta. My dad lives out in Cedartown, NW of ATL, and it’s got a very large Hispanic population.
I’ve never seen any homeless Hispanics, so 98% of them in my area are renting somehow.
CA is limited to 1 month security deposit in most cases.
With illegals and the poor in general, one person rents an apartment and then 4-6 move in, sometimes sleeping in shifts.
This crowding overloading the neighborhood with their cars, fills up the garbage earlier, uses more utilities and often causes more noise and disturbance.
But landlords will turn a blind eye as long as the rent comes in on time because they don’t want to go through the months of empty apartments until they get the next tenant.
Supposedly, some 10 million entered the country illegally, during the invasion. Don’t know the numbers, but the invasion was offsetting the loss of Californians leaving the state.
We spend over 2% of our income on homeowners (with umbrella) insurance and another close to 10% on real estate taxes. Are you saying that neither of these expenses are included in the CPI report?
Yes, That is exactly what I am saying.
Not understated – Totally missing
https://mishtalk.com/economics/is-homeowners-insurance-understated-in-the-cpi-shop-around/
Home insurance – NO
Property Taxes – INDIRECTLY through the scam OER
I agree with your logic there, but insurance would also be indirect via OER, no? At least when we price out the apartment complexes we buy we view those items as being very similar with similar drivers and impacts.
That’s probably where I’d disagree with Mish that it’s *totally* missing. It’s not totally missing – just not explicit and not directly linked at all.
Personally I go back and forth on whether or not OER belongs there or not. I can see the logic both ways. Kind of depends if you think OER inflation is a cost of living concept or an inflation concept (those two items are commonly used interchangeably, but at least insofar as how CPI/PCE are calculated, they are subtly different concepts both theoretically and practically.)
Yes, like I said above, it’s indirectly included in OER which is a survey of households of what they could rent their home for which, of course, would have to cover insurance & taxes.
It’s been almost 40 years since the BLS actually tracked the change in home prices as a measure of CPI.
Like Mish has expensively written, the housing part of CPI is a scam.
Shadow Stats has CPI running at ~12%, when it’s calculated like it was in 1980, pre-1983 when major changes were made including Hedonic adjustments.
It’s very reasonable to think that one of the reasons why CPI was so high in the early 1980-1982 was because BLS did a much better job of capturing price changes.
I’m sure there’s been a few good improvements over the years, but there’s NO WAY the current housing portion of CPI has accurately captured the change in consumer costs associated with owning & maintaining a home.
It’s just not possible.
I am looking forward to your suggestions. You have been complaining about BLS jobs data being wrong since full time employment started shrinking back in mid 2022 while monthly job numbers kept growing.
If the data is wrong in calculating jobs, one can assume that it is wrong in every other measurement as well.
Great points on those two part of the calculation, but don’t forget how the “utility” measurement can also magically make actual inflation disappear in from the “inflation calculation.”
no auto. walk to grocery and great ethnic food of all price points in gotham. not sure what the current monthly cost of 2 autos to some suburbanite or rural folks, but it’s outrageous. i’d rather walk and save the shekels for great food. home prepared or restaurant. of course without our world wide empire war mongering with bases all over the globe, that cost could be used for people’s food intake here in the empire fatherland.
It’s expensive to eat out at restaurants vs. preparing meals at home. My wife & I are retired, so we have the time to shop & cook. For the cost of a middle-of-the-road restaurant plus tip, it usually buys us food for a week that we cook at home…about $70-$80, We eat out about twice per month.
You made me get up and look. About $300 a month for two and probably another hundred in seeds and supplies for the garden. Much of that ends up canned or frozen as well.
Other food at home = 1/6 of all food. That sort of makes it hard to interpret what it is. My guess is that is 2/3 processed and 1/3 hyper-processed food and little else, given the average American fattie.
Major difference: Our fruit and veggie intake is quite a bit larger than our meat intake. A lot of it is grown within 100′ of our kitchen
We dine in probably more like 75% of the time than the 60% shown by pie chart
My guess is that ‘other food at home’ category is pre-made foods. Like if you buy an already made frozen Pizza and just later heat it up or buy a box of fresh fried chicken from the deli etc. That’s the only way the ‘other’ category gets that high because those things tend to be more money.
Maybe also convenience foods like canned soup, or boxed macaroni & cheese.