I'm not surprised. K shaped economy, any sector that isn't high tech / AI is stagnant. It's rough out there. I've been saying since Covid, retailers have figured out some consumers aren't as price sensitive as previously thought. WholeFoods doesn't need to cut prices, but the lower tier grocery stores will really feel the cutbacks.
Everything costs too much. I went to the grocery store yesterday I spent $50 to get a packet of bread, a dozen eggs, two yogurts, two yellow onions, a jalapeno, two tomatoes and a bunch of parsley. This covers breakfast for 2 days for my partner and I. In 2022, $150 would fetch the entire week’s groceries for the two of us. We are paying more, while having to change what we eat with cheaper/unhealthier options. Otherwise we would be spending almost $1500/month on just groceries for 2.
I used to eat high quality fish every week, now it’s beans and cheaper cuts of chicken. And we make good money, but our wages have gone down since 2022 when adjusted for inflation.
This is much more likely due to competition from food delivery services. Spend on which has shot up dramatically because at least in the United States average incomes have actually risen substantially since 2015.
AFAIU, when beef prices started to spike a year or two ago, ranchers decided to cash in and slaughter much of their herd, including breeding stock. This was on top of a decades-long decline in herd size, and a recent drought that has driven up costs of maintaining a herd--another reason why they decided to cull and cash-in.
The current situation will be the new normal for at least the next several years. Chicken hasn't risen nearly as much, just moderately more than inflation, perhaps because of a shift of demand away from beef.
There also seems to be greater price discrimination going on with beef than previously, with larger spreads between, e.g., bulk ground vs vacuum packed ground vs whole cuts.
One of the most common interactions I witness at our local supermarket butcher counter is the guy explaining to yet another customer that the advertised weekly special sold out before lunch a couple days prior.
Very well-supported argument by the fact that obesity tends to accumulate in the well-off who can afford lots of food, while poor folks tend to be slender. So yeah, clearly lower spending on food would reduce obesity.
Probably cuts back on some of the epic waste on the consumer side. Hope that ripples to cutting down waste throughout the system. Paying for stuff that isn't consumed is by definition waste.
That "waste" is almost certainly excess production that can't find a market + spoilage. It is entirely normal for farmers to literally dump their crops in these cases. Everyone in the supply chain does it to some extent.
Lack of market and spoilage makes it unavoidable. When I lived in farming communities there were massive piles where people dumped excess crops.
1.5lb / day? I'd wager it's quite equally in thirds, would love to see the data.
I'd believe 0.5lbs/day/person in my household - cook enough for everyone to have seconds, but most of the time it's tossed (sometimes after some time spent in the fridge/freezer hoping for a reheat); stuff bought but inedible (chicken bones, etc)..
I'd believe similar in the distribution pipeline (just look at how much stuff are in the discounted aisle just about to fall off sell-by date + obviously moldy goods), and I'd believe similar in the production pipeline.
No food gets thrown out in my house. We have trash from plastic and paper but food is consumed, by somebody. If it hits the expiration date then it’s today’s quick meal or dog food. I try not to throw away anything that is edible.
absolutely. Cooking smaller meals for the family to ensure it's all eaten or having no-cook alternatives for afterwards (hello graham crackers!) if you're still hungry. Normally I try my best to portion for who's going to eat. If I'm cooking for myself, its usually a one-pan meal.
When I got married our food waste probably tripled. My food waste as a single guy was significantly less than married. When I had kids it probably tripled again. Much like a horse to water, you cannot explain to a 3 year old that if they don't eat all the banannas before tomorrow, they will go bad. We probably throw out 1-2 lbs of fruit a week, which is ~100 lbs a year right there.
The kid might have ate 2 lbs of blueberries a week for six months, but surprise, they hate them now!
I can't count the number of half-full glasses of milk I've found in the last month, probably averaging 1 per day. Kids are extremely inefficient eaters unless it is covered in sugar or chocolate.
The missing datapoint is that households are having to work more labor-hours per banana every year for decades, so the energy necessary to cook banana bread is in direct competition with the energy necessary to purchase bananas. Atomic Era assumptions that a household has the time, energy, capability, appliances, and electricity budget to cook banana bread no longer reliably hold in the U.S. and cannot be taken for granted as accessible to all families. (If this seems like a negative feedback loop, it is; see also food deserts, substitution of Added Sugars for more expensive-but-nutritional calories in the diets of our majority-obese population, and so on.)
I have two kids and this is pure bollox. They'll eat what they are given if they are hungry enough. Or eat the leftovers yourself. Cook the fruit and make compote. We never throw out edible food, virtually zero waste. Just make an effort.
The variation in prices of staple foods between different stores has exploded in Chicago. For what it's worth, Aldi is significantly cheaper for many items. It's gotten a lot busier there too.
Theoretically I'm kinda rich, but I feel the crunch at the grocery store.
I buy the highest quality, lowest cost stuff I can find.
There can be a positive story here maybe though:
- More doordash = less grocery
- More farmer's market = less grocery
- More home-grown = less grocery
Though TFA points out,
80% of Americans say they're still trying to spend less
28% are actively trying to cut back on groceries
56% are trading down to lower-priced brands
49% are simply buying fewer items,
44% are leaning harder on coupons and promotions
BTW my nearest grocery shut down this quarter. Couldn't make money. Got to go farther now.
Is delivery services accounted for? I buy 1/3 I did a year ago, as Amazon's services are so convenient, and not much more expensive. (Especially since I throw out less now)
No way to know what data sources NielsenIQ is using, but for what it lacks in data from retailers, it probably makes up for by way of consumers' receipts.
> Our analysis of NielsenIQ grocery data shows a trend in negative unit growth starting in mid-2025, masked by steady price increases. But since February 2026, units have stepped down sharply enough to pull sales lower across the US. Prices are still climbing 2% to 3% year over year,
Seems pretty straightforward. They increased their price to try and make up for losses, which in turn mean less people purchasing, which they responded to by increasing prices. A lovely little circle.
Maybe some economists should investigate how prices effects demand, could be groundbreaking.
What is interesting is the subnational breakdown - volumes have been decreasing in the US West for over a year compared to the rest of the US, and overall sales have also decreased as well whereas they are stagnant in the rest of the US.
Journalist Alfred Henry Lewis said over a century ago that civilization is only 9 meals away from anarchy. I fear in the coming years we are going to be testing that theory.
Another quote that springs to mind is "Corporations behave like they're annoyed that they have to go through you to get to your money". The pandemic was a catalyst for a change in attitude by American corporations who were afraid to raise prices. That fear is now gone. Every aspect of corporations now are dedicated to raising prices and the easiest thing to raise prices on is things with inelastic demand. Food, housing, electricity. It's the entire basis of private equity, which seeks "pricing power". That's just another way of saying "inelastic demand".
All of this has been exacerbated by a pointless, unwinnable foreign war in Iran at the behest of a foreign state (ie Israel). The only thing thus far that has prevented a global economic collapse is China [1] but that is about to bite because the US SPR is about to hit the effective minimum [2]. And now the issue isn't going to be crude oil but shortages of refined petroleum products, particularly diesel. You can see this by looking at the 3-2-1 Crack Spread [3], which itself is also going to get worse because of the destruction of an estimated 40% of Russia's refining capacity, which has already resulted in halting diesel exports.
Diesel prices are a huge factor in inflation [4]. Another lagging issue here is that much of the crops planted in the northern hemisphere this year received less or no fertilizer because of the Iran war. That's likely to cause a famine impacting tens of millions of people and will further drive up food prices.
Rents keep going up. Food prices keep going up. Inflation keeps going up. The one thing that doesn't keep going up are wages. And people are rapidly running out of money to absorb it. And the American government that is inflicting this on not only the US but really the world, does not care.
Is the whole Straight of Hormuz fertilizer shortage just FUD, or should we be preparing to see this "real"ness get a lot more real in the coming months or season?
I think it's a legitimate concern, and just one of many problems. Couple that with inflation (yes, and rising costs self compounding), petrol problems, pressure on the dollar, income stagnation, loads of other fun things and the wondrous introduction of LLM magic into every orifice of society, where should we expect this all leads to?
I am always looking for reasons to let my inner optimist shine through. Help, anyone?
Edit: I expect I will be chastened by vegans for the following, but..
I no longer buy milk. Organic milk up from an astonishing ~$5 to an average of $7.50 per gallon now.
I do not buy much meat, but beef is no longer an option. Yeah, it was subsidized, but that doesn't mean it's getting more affordable.
But really, I can no longer afford fresh vegetables. And though I lean vegetarian, that is quickly becoming an unhealthy option.
Haven't you heard? Everything is real these days. Now I have the full picture, and it's load-bearing. Here's the smoking gun, a belt-and-suspenders approach to article-writing. It's not writing, it's poetry.
The claim that everything is real is too broad and I'd urge caution in making such a blanket assumption. It would be epistemically reckless of me to agree here. It is also possible that the pattern you are seeing is simply a result of users absorbing the vernacular of LLMs. And calling it poetry is not supported by the actual content and I don't think that framing is accurate.*3
1. How every reply begins now.
2. How every assertion is handled now, even if agreed
The critique of my performance you are making is not an insult, not necessarily disagreement -really big juicy emdash- but a somber reference to the common punctuation style that many are understandably becoming frustrated with.
Or.. is it a GLP-1 byproduct? These are powerful appetite suppressants.. in fact I'm curious if the mechanism of action of these peptides affects other impulse behavior, including impulse purchasing?
We know that people buy more when they are hungry. They also buy more when the smells of food are in the store (the other benefit of rotisserie chicken).
"Early studies suggest that GLP-1s may be effective in treating opioid, alcohol and nicotine addiction. Researchers are examining whether the drugs can also help people who are addicted to gambling, sex and shopping, among other things."
Yeah - powerful confounder to all the analyses of customer behavior. Even the article itself calls it out - there probably is a good way to segment it, as GLP1 availability is not uniform, some states regulate it more tightly etc.
It certainly does, I mentioned it in an comment below, good callout.
I am however also more interested in how this affects other types of consumer behavior - and whether that is a factor in pullback on the economy (on top of other factors - energy, job market, trade restrictions).
> In the US today, about 15% of adults have tried GLP-1s, with 7% currently taking them, according to research based on Bain’s proprietary GLP-1 adoption model.
I'm not surprised. K shaped economy, any sector that isn't high tech / AI is stagnant. It's rough out there. I've been saying since Covid, retailers have figured out some consumers aren't as price sensitive as previously thought. WholeFoods doesn't need to cut prices, but the lower tier grocery stores will really feel the cutbacks.
In NYC Amazon fresh is cheaper than most of the grocery stores, except maybe some things like frozen food in Trader Joe.
We simply stopped buying food in the grocery store across the street: Amazon fresh on many positions can be like 50% cheaper.
Mr Bezos thanks you for your support and sends his regards.
They should just lead with people don't have any money to buy things because wages aren't increasing to match living expenses.
It cuts back some of the fig leaves
Everything costs too much. I went to the grocery store yesterday I spent $50 to get a packet of bread, a dozen eggs, two yogurts, two yellow onions, a jalapeno, two tomatoes and a bunch of parsley. This covers breakfast for 2 days for my partner and I. In 2022, $150 would fetch the entire week’s groceries for the two of us. We are paying more, while having to change what we eat with cheaper/unhealthier options. Otherwise we would be spending almost $1500/month on just groceries for 2.
I used to eat high quality fish every week, now it’s beans and cheaper cuts of chicken. And we make good money, but our wages have gone down since 2022 when adjusted for inflation.
Where are you located? I think even NYCs groceries are not that expensive.
This is much more likely due to competition from food delivery services. Spend on which has shot up dramatically because at least in the United States average incomes have actually risen substantially since 2015.
Meat is like $30/lb. What a joke, I see almost no one at the butcher counter in grocery stores anymore.
AFAIU, when beef prices started to spike a year or two ago, ranchers decided to cash in and slaughter much of their herd, including breeding stock. This was on top of a decades-long decline in herd size, and a recent drought that has driven up costs of maintaining a herd--another reason why they decided to cull and cash-in.
The current situation will be the new normal for at least the next several years. Chicken hasn't risen nearly as much, just moderately more than inflation, perhaps because of a shift of demand away from beef.
There also seems to be greater price discrimination going on with beef than previously, with larger spreads between, e.g., bulk ground vs vacuum packed ground vs whole cuts.
We buy a side of beef at a time from a farm down the street for $6/lb, up from $4 a few years ago. Can’t buy beef any other way.
One of the most common interactions I witness at our local supermarket butcher counter is the guy explaining to yet another customer that the advertised weekly special sold out before lunch a couple days prior.
They should just lead with saying that obesity rates have tripled since the 1960s and maybe they will start declining a bit now.
Very well-supported argument by the fact that obesity tends to accumulate in the well-off who can afford lots of food, while poor folks tend to be slender. So yeah, clearly lower spending on food would reduce obesity.
Obesity is inversely correlated with income.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237141/us-obesity-by-ann...
i think they were being sarcastic with a very valid point ;)
Correct.
Probably cuts back on some of the epic waste on the consumer side. Hope that ripples to cutting down waste throughout the system. Paying for stuff that isn't consumed is by definition waste.
Consumers are the last group I would blame.
https://www.usda.gov/about-food/food-safety/food-loss-and-wa...
> food waste is estimated at ... 133 billion pounds ... in 2010.
USA population in 2010 was 311M. 133B / 311M = 427 pounds per person.
I sincerely doubt the average consumer throws away 427 pounds of fresh food in a year.
That "waste" is almost certainly excess production that can't find a market + spoilage. It is entirely normal for farmers to literally dump their crops in these cases. Everyone in the supply chain does it to some extent.
Lack of market and spoilage makes it unavoidable. When I lived in farming communities there were massive piles where people dumped excess crops.
1.5lb / day? I'd wager it's quite equally in thirds, would love to see the data.
I'd believe 0.5lbs/day/person in my household - cook enough for everyone to have seconds, but most of the time it's tossed (sometimes after some time spent in the fridge/freezer hoping for a reheat); stuff bought but inedible (chicken bones, etc)..
I'd believe similar in the distribution pipeline (just look at how much stuff are in the discounted aisle just about to fall off sell-by date + obviously moldy goods), and I'd believe similar in the production pipeline.
No food gets thrown out in my house. We have trash from plastic and paper but food is consumed, by somebody. If it hits the expiration date then it’s today’s quick meal or dog food. I try not to throw away anything that is edible.
Probably was that way before we got married and had a kid. And before our dog started getting older and we needed to watch what she eats.
Now the notion of "cook fresh every day" is a thing (rather than reheats), we try to do keep leftovers but eventually we run out of space for them.
absolutely. Cooking smaller meals for the family to ensure it's all eaten or having no-cook alternatives for afterwards (hello graham crackers!) if you're still hungry. Normally I try my best to portion for who's going to eat. If I'm cooking for myself, its usually a one-pan meal.
Or composted to feed my garden. I hardly throw out any garbage.
When I got married our food waste probably tripled. My food waste as a single guy was significantly less than married. When I had kids it probably tripled again. Much like a horse to water, you cannot explain to a 3 year old that if they don't eat all the banannas before tomorrow, they will go bad. We probably throw out 1-2 lbs of fruit a week, which is ~100 lbs a year right there.
The kid might have ate 2 lbs of blueberries a week for six months, but surprise, they hate them now!
I can't count the number of half-full glasses of milk I've found in the last month, probably averaging 1 per day. Kids are extremely inefficient eaters unless it is covered in sugar or chocolate.
>they don't eat all the banannas before tomorrow, they will go bad
This one specifically has a good solution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_bread
The missing datapoint is that households are having to work more labor-hours per banana every year for decades, so the energy necessary to cook banana bread is in direct competition with the energy necessary to purchase bananas. Atomic Era assumptions that a household has the time, energy, capability, appliances, and electricity budget to cook banana bread no longer reliably hold in the U.S. and cannot be taken for granted as accessible to all families. (If this seems like a negative feedback loop, it is; see also food deserts, substitution of Added Sugars for more expensive-but-nutritional calories in the diets of our majority-obese population, and so on.)
I have two kids and this is pure bollox. They'll eat what they are given if they are hungry enough. Or eat the leftovers yourself. Cook the fruit and make compote. We never throw out edible food, virtually zero waste. Just make an effort.
Ripes bananas makes the best cakes or pancakes ! I got your point though.
Buy frozen fruit?
The variation in prices of staple foods between different stores has exploded in Chicago. For what it's worth, Aldi is significantly cheaper for many items. It's gotten a lot busier there too.
Theoretically I'm kinda rich, but I feel the crunch at the grocery store.
I buy the highest quality, lowest cost stuff I can find.
There can be a positive story here maybe though:
- More doordash = less grocery
- More farmer's market = less grocery
- More home-grown = less grocery
Though TFA points out,
BTW my nearest grocery shut down this quarter. Couldn't make money. Got to go farther now.Shelves are fairly spotty in my town. Never saw that before, not in 50 years.
Is delivery services accounted for? I buy 1/3 I did a year ago, as Amazon's services are so convenient, and not much more expensive. (Especially since I throw out less now)
No way to know what data sources NielsenIQ is using, but for what it lacks in data from retailers, it probably makes up for by way of consumers' receipts.
People underestimate the impact of glp1 drugs on this. They should also correlate with decline in fast food consumption.
I don't know how to estimate the impact tbh. The same article links to https://www.bain.com/insights/weight-loss-drug-users-spend-l...
How much does 7% of the population spending 4% less on groceries impact the numbers in the original article?
I doubt it. I'd wager the opposite: we like to overestimate the most interesting explanations vs. the boring ones.
My sedentary, calorie dense, UberEats-at-2am 5000 calorie lifestyle isn't why I'm fat -- it's the "seed oils".
I think that is also big factor why many, very many, products contain now protein, and the exessive protein food receipes on social media.
I don’t think a large percentage of the American population is paying $500/month for glp1.
cooking one or two portions at home using quality ingredients from stores in SF is literally as pricey as eating out nowadays.
doesn't surprise me that people are trying to get their dollars to stretch further by buying in bulk, planning ahead more consciously, etc.
Every corner of your life where you think you are safe, stable, and able to save will be found and min/maxed for ultimate profits.
Trump put a little orange thumb on the scale by choosing Walmart to be the winner on beef prices. Did they weigh for government interference?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/grocery/2026/07/08/walmart-ro...
> Our analysis of NielsenIQ grocery data shows a trend in negative unit growth starting in mid-2025, masked by steady price increases. But since February 2026, units have stepped down sharply enough to pull sales lower across the US. Prices are still climbing 2% to 3% year over year,
Seems pretty straightforward. They increased their price to try and make up for losses, which in turn mean less people purchasing, which they responded to by increasing prices. A lovely little circle.
Maybe some economists should investigate how prices effects demand, could be groundbreaking.
Yeah it's real rocket science at work here. Grocery bill keeps going up and less food comes home. It's a real mystery.
It’s the trickle down theory of food, the super rich must eat first. Eventually, it will trickle down to the poor. Trust economists on this one.
What is interesting is the subnational breakdown - volumes have been decreasing in the US West for over a year compared to the rest of the US, and overall sales have also decreased as well whereas they are stagnant in the rest of the US.
Journalist Alfred Henry Lewis said over a century ago that civilization is only 9 meals away from anarchy. I fear in the coming years we are going to be testing that theory.
Another quote that springs to mind is "Corporations behave like they're annoyed that they have to go through you to get to your money". The pandemic was a catalyst for a change in attitude by American corporations who were afraid to raise prices. That fear is now gone. Every aspect of corporations now are dedicated to raising prices and the easiest thing to raise prices on is things with inelastic demand. Food, housing, electricity. It's the entire basis of private equity, which seeks "pricing power". That's just another way of saying "inelastic demand".
All of this has been exacerbated by a pointless, unwinnable foreign war in Iran at the behest of a foreign state (ie Israel). The only thing thus far that has prevented a global economic collapse is China [1] but that is about to bite because the US SPR is about to hit the effective minimum [2]. And now the issue isn't going to be crude oil but shortages of refined petroleum products, particularly diesel. You can see this by looking at the 3-2-1 Crack Spread [3], which itself is also going to get worse because of the destruction of an estimated 40% of Russia's refining capacity, which has already resulted in halting diesel exports.
Diesel prices are a huge factor in inflation [4]. Another lagging issue here is that much of the crops planted in the northern hemisphere this year received less or no fertilizer because of the Iran war. That's likely to cause a famine impacting tens of millions of people and will further drive up food prices.
Rents keep going up. Food prices keep going up. Inflation keeps going up. The one thing that doesn't keep going up are wages. And people are rapidly running out of money to absorb it. And the American government that is inflicting this on not only the US but really the world, does not care.
[1]: https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/china-oil-imports-i...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-stocks-us-strate...
[3]: https://rbnenergy.com/market-data/3-2-1-crack-spread
[4]: https://realeconomy.rsmus.com/market-minute-diesel-trucking-...
Is the whole Straight of Hormuz fertilizer shortage just FUD, or should we be preparing to see this "real"ness get a lot more real in the coming months or season?
I think it's a legitimate concern, and just one of many problems. Couple that with inflation (yes, and rising costs self compounding), petrol problems, pressure on the dollar, income stagnation, loads of other fun things and the wondrous introduction of LLM magic into every orifice of society, where should we expect this all leads to?
I am always looking for reasons to let my inner optimist shine through. Help, anyone?
Edit: I expect I will be chastened by vegans for the following, but..
I no longer buy milk. Organic milk up from an astonishing ~$5 to an average of $7.50 per gallon now.
I do not buy much meat, but beef is no longer an option. Yeah, it was subsidized, but that doesn't mean it's getting more affordable.
But really, I can no longer afford fresh vegetables. And though I lean vegetarian, that is quickly becoming an unhealthy option.
Woah… price elasticity of demand is real… who knew? /s
Lame
Oh Man. The author couldn't even write their own headline. Thanks LLM!
Haven't you heard? Everything is real these days. Now I have the full picture, and it's load-bearing. Here's the smoking gun, a belt-and-suspenders approach to article-writing. It's not writing, it's poetry.
You are right on one thing.*1
But I need to push back on something.*2
The claim that everything is real is too broad and I'd urge caution in making such a blanket assumption. It would be epistemically reckless of me to agree here. It is also possible that the pattern you are seeing is simply a result of users absorbing the vernacular of LLMs. And calling it poetry is not supported by the actual content and I don't think that framing is accurate.*3
1. How every reply begins now.
2. How every assertion is handled now, even if agreed
3. Feigned obtuseness, or missing the point
How'd I do?
Pretty good, but it's missing the punchiness of "we wrote ten articles, and here's what we've learned: every tip, every misstep, every verbal tic".
I hate how it's everywhere now. Even my coworkers speak like this.
The critique of my performance you are making is not an insult, not necessarily disagreement -really big juicy emdash- but a somber reference to the common punctuation style that many are understandably becoming frustrated with.
Edit: There are three ways to address this......
Obesity rates have been declining over the same time period.
Ozempic drops grocery purchases by about 5%.[1]
[1] https://foodlore.blog/glp1-ozempic-effect-food-industry/
Or.. is it a GLP-1 byproduct? These are powerful appetite suppressants.. in fact I'm curious if the mechanism of action of these peptides affects other impulse behavior, including impulse purchasing?
We know that people buy more when they are hungry. They also buy more when the smells of food are in the store (the other benefit of rotisserie chicken).
"Early studies suggest that GLP-1s may be effective in treating opioid, alcohol and nicotine addiction. Researchers are examining whether the drugs can also help people who are addicted to gambling, sex and shopping, among other things."
https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/04/ozempic-addic...
Yeah - powerful confounder to all the analyses of customer behavior. Even the article itself calls it out - there probably is a good way to segment it, as GLP1 availability is not uniform, some states regulate it more tightly etc.
The analysis mentions this, says it's a factor and links to:
https://www.bain.com/insights/weight-loss-drug-users-spend-l...
It certainly does, I mentioned it in an comment below, good callout.
I am however also more interested in how this affects other types of consumer behavior - and whether that is a factor in pullback on the economy (on top of other factors - energy, job market, trade restrictions).
I am inclined towards thinking that it is probably this as there is also decline in fast food demand.
12% of the adult population. I think it's a good theory.
> In the US today, about 15% of adults have tried GLP-1s, with 7% currently taking them, according to research based on Bain’s proprietary GLP-1 adoption model.
Is the 12% from another source?