This fall, as we gather around the table and stuff ourselves silly, consider that our annual food coma disguised as a national holiday will hit us in the belly AND the wallet.
Take turkey, for example. Plain old frozen turkey, the kind your mom would pop in the oven for 1,700 hours, costs about 13 cents more per pound this year than last year, according to price data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the past 10 years, the price of a 15-pound gobbler-the average size of a Thanksgiving turkey, per the University of Illinois Extension-has gone from about $16 to more than $25.
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It gets worse when you see that food prices are outpacing the cost of other goods, and they have been for a while. More bad news: Wages, adjusted for inflation, have remained almost exactly the same over the past 10 years.
Streeterville resident Nina Patel said she had been feeling the squeeze recently.
"Within the past two or three years, I've definitely noticed prices have gone up," she said while scoping out the poultry section at a downtown Jewel-Osco.
But Patel said that despite rising prices and stagnant wages, she probably wouldn't make many changes in her grocery routine.
Expensive food has a disproportionate effect on your wallet. After all, it's not like you can just stop eating.
"If prices are rising faster than, let's say, your salary, then I guess [you're] losing dollars," said Perry Tsay, a BLS economist.
The BLS keeps track of the Consumer Price Index, which tracks changes in the average prices of selected household goods and services. The overall CPI rose 1.7 percent over the 12-month period that ended in September. The CPI for food eaten at home-groceries, basically-rose 3.2 percent.
"Food is rising faster than the average rate of the CPI, so that's pretty noticeable," Tsay said. "Energy prices, gas prices have been falling, but as far as food prices, currently, they have been rising faster than the average rate of inflation."
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture economist Annemarie Kuhns, over the past 20 years grocery prices have risen 2.6 percent per year on average.
"The rates of inflation that we're seeing overall for food prices is pretty much what we'd expect year to year," she said.
And the USDA expects food prices to rise another 2 or 3 percent next year.
Which foods are seeing the biggest price jumps? Kuhns would have you visualize your friendly neighborhood grocery store.
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"The prices of the goods in the perimeter of the store-meats, dairy, fresh fruits-those are the ones that are seeing higher than average inflation," she said. "Center aisles rely less on commodity prices."
There's no one reason that food prices have been rising, but ultimately, it comes down to supply and demand.
A drought in Texas, for example, has sent the price of beef skyrocketing. Herders are culling their stock of cattle because of the drought, but Americans still clamor for steak and hamburger, so the price of beef is climbing.
A virus in the hog supply has made pork pricier; and a disease affecting Florida citrus has driven fresh fruit prices up 6.1 percent year over year.
Keep that in mind as you gobble your turkey. And maybe freeze your leftovers: Next year, they'll be pricier.