Greedflation? What the price of Shreddies tells us about soaring household costs

Inflation is peaking but food giants such as Nestle are complaining about ‘input costs’ – is it justified, asks James Moore

The prices of branded goods have surged (Wikimedia Commons/ Executioner)

Just how much do you value your Shreddies – the “original”, as maker Nestle declares on the box? Kantar has just published the results from its latest supermarket sweep of the buying habits of its enviably large panel of around 30,000 demographically representative households, together with its survey of food price inflation.

One piece of good news in the trove of data: this is the first measure of food price inflation to show a decline for some time. The figure for the four weeks to 16 April was 17.3 per cent was only marginally below the 17.5 per cent recorded previously. But there have been few enough straws to clutch at of late.

While Kantar’s retail guru Fraser McKevitt is treating the figure with a degree of caution, he does think grocery inflation will soon ease. But food prices are still going to be causing trouble for people on a budget and for some time to come because while the rate at which they are rising is likely to fall, they’ll still be rising.