In the next weeks, experts predict that it will be harder to put food on the table than to keep the lights on.
The cost of living issue has upended the lives of many Brits as the price of food has more than doubled amid persistent double-digit inflation.
Food inflation is alarmingly high at 15.7%, with some fresh food price tags rising 18.8% from one year to the next in April.
The tales have been eerie. People enter food banks “crying,” and single parents miss meals or consume cat food because they cannot afford to buy groceries.
Statistics released by the Resolution Foundation yesterday show how the average grocery bill will overtake the increase in the average fuel bill by next month.
‘While energy prices have risen faster, food makes up a far larger share of the typical household’s consumption (13% versus 5% in 2019-20),’ the report from the think-tank says.
‘This, combined with food prices continuing to rise even as energy bills fall back, means that by this summer the average increase in food costs since 2019-20 (£1,000) will be larger than that for energy bills (around £900).’
The price jump will hit low-income households the hardest as food costs gobble up more of people’s paychecks than energy bills.
One in five people is already eating less or skipping meals, with low-income and larger families or people on benefits being more likely to do so.
People of colour were also more likely to say the same, according to the Resolution Foundation’s analysis of a YouGov survey of 10,122 UK adults aged 18 or over, as well as say they have used a food or warm bank in the last four weeks.
In the year since April 2022, record numbers of food parcels were handed out by the Trussel Trust, which operates food pantries across the nation, with 750,000 people using the charity network’s food banks.
‘Taken together, high food and energy inflation mean low-income households are experiencing effective inflation rates more than 3ppts higher than high-income households,’ the Resolution Foundation adds.
‘We also know that poorer households buying the cheapest food are less able to change what they buy to save money. Instead, they cut down on eating.’
Six in 10 (61%) of the poorest fifth of households have cut back on essentials compared to 35% of richer households, per data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
Rent, water, mobile and broadband bills, council tax, interest rates and soon energy bills (the current price cap will end in July) have all risen in recent months.
The Resolution Foundation says that it’s not sure whether the government has quite clocked how difficult these price increases are for families.
‘Everyone realises food prices are rising,’ it says, ‘but it’s less clear that the scale of the increase has been fully understood in Westminster.
‘This summer the food price shock to family finances is on course to overtake that from energy bills.
‘The cost of living crisis isn’t ending, it’s just entering a new phase.’
