They’re the wrong numbers and people misunderstand the numbers. The consumption basket for CPI (food) is determined by consumption surveys. Not desire or historical consumption. You can have less and lower quality food with a rising spend on food.

For example, food away from home is down. People cannot afford to go out to eat as much. Rather than reflect the higher cost of going out to eat, the consumption basket reduces the proportion of food away from home.

There are also hard limits on food spending. People have limited money. Instead what you seeing is a continued increase in SNAP and record food bank usage.

Make no mistake. The young family or median person is worse off with food security today despite spending more.