Experimental research has shown that price inflation of some low-cost food items far exceeds the average rate.
Pasta was the worst offender, with the lowest cost 500g packet skyrocketing from 36 to 53 pence, a 47% increase.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a common measure of inflation for consumers, puts the average rate at 9% from April 2021 to April 2022.
What food items are most affected by inflation?
The cheapest biscuits, beef mince, packets of rice, and crisps were all found to have gone up in price by 15% or more.
With a rise over 14%, breakfast staples bread and orange juice also beat out the average index, as did breakfast cereal at 10%.
Of the 30 items studied, only six saw the cheapest price decrease, while the rest saw inflation of some amount.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) used web-scraped data from supermarkets to determine the price rises of the lowest cost items at seven major supermarkets and compared them to average inflation.
This comes less than a week after chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement of measures to help with the cost of living crisis, including a windfall tax on oil and gas profits.
This also follows comments three weeks ago by Tory MP Lee Anderson in the House of Commons, where he said: “There’s not this massive use for food banks in this country.
“You’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget.”
Jack Monroe, a food poverty campaigner, tweeted: “backing up my own research and evidence from January, the hikes in the value brands and basics have been much higher than average inflation stats.
“I hope that going forward, MPs who set the uprating figures for benefits, and also discussions around a real living wage, will take this disparity into account.
“As I have said for 10 years now, and as many others have pointed out before and alongside me, it’s FAR more expensive to be poor.
“And now the literal experts in data gathering and statistics are helpfully, methodically, forensically backing that up. This feels like huge progress.”
The report also highlighted that the price difference between the lowest and second lowest priced brand of item in a supermarket was 20% or higher for over two thirds of items surveyed, and over 50% for four of the 30.
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