Food bought for consumption at home cost roughly a third more in the middle of 2026 than it had in 2019. NielsenIQ scanner data put the cumulative increase at 33 percent, the Department of Agriculture’s own series at a little under 30, and neither has retreated from that plateau. What moved instead, beginning late last year and speeding up through the spring, was the rate of climb, which decelerated far enough that the official forecasting machinery now treats grocery inflation as ordinary. The Economic Research Service’s October 23 release projected a 2.3 percent rise in food-at-home prices for the calendar year, marginally below the twenty-year average and the third downward revision in three consecutive monthly updates.
Read alone, that forecast is sound and reassuring, and a good deal of commentary has read it that way. Put it beside the physical quantity of food moving through American stores and the reassurance shrinks. Grocery units sold were 1.8 percent lower year over year in June, the fifth consecutive month of contraction, following four months of annual declines near two percent spread fairly evenly across regions and store formats. Dollar sales held up longer than units did, because price increases were wide enough to cover for the difference, and somewhere around February they stopped being wide enough.
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