NPR's What American's Spend on Groceries

I stumbled across an NPR article from June 8th that I thought you might find interesting: What American's Spend on Groceries.

Primarily, the article consists of graphs. I've copied the graphs below so that you can see them. Just to be clear, these graphs are all from NPR. You can access them from the above link

This first graph shows you that we used to spend about 13% on groceries, and now we spend about 8.5% on groceries. In my house, we spend about 12-13% of our monthly budget in groceries. I find it interesting that my household's grocery expenses now are almost the same as a house's grocery expenses in 1982, especially when you look at the second graph.....

In this second graph, you see how families used to spend their grocery money and how they now spend their grocery money. What's most interesting to me is the high percentage of cost on processed foods and treats: 22.9%. Now, NPR pointed out that the cost of meat has significantly decreased since 1982, which might be what keeps it from being the top family food expense; even with that consideration, processed foods still went from being in the bottom two categories to being in the top two. Processed food is cheaper to make than whole food because it uses chemically derived sweeteners and fillers, which might be why our food bill is the same percentage as family food bills were in 1982. We don't buy hardly any processed foods. 

I'm very grateful that certain foods have decreased in cost, such as butter! How I love my butter :) What I'm most shocked about is why on earth peppers have increased in cost 34.%!!!!!! I'm spending a fortune on groceries right now just because of our produce bill. The other day I dropped $12 on peppers alone. Today, I spent about $50 just on produce that won't quite last us a week. I'm hoping my husband isn't reading these numbers! 

Have you looked at the percentage of family income you spend on groceries? What about how you spend that grocery money?

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