For some reason, I have kept almost every receipt Chris and I generated in the last two and a half years. I recently decided it was an unnecessary collection, so I started going through them and discarding everything that is not important. However, before I tossed most of them I thought I’d do a little experiment in rising food prices. I pulled out two receipts from my local grocery store, Hy-Vee at College Square Mall in Cedar Falls, Iowa. One receipt was from October 31, 2006 (almost two years ago) and the second was from February 19, 2008 (almost seven months ago). I decided to buy the exact same items tonight to see how rising food prices are affecting my wallet.

There is a 22.5 month gap between the purchases made on these two receipts. The receipt on the left has a total charge of $16.27 and the receipt from tonight has a total charge of $21.69, a difference of $5.42. Ouch! The only item that is not exactly the same as the original list is the imitation crab, though I found a comparable replacement. If I remove the imitation crab from the equation, the difference between the two receipts is $4.52. There are also some other factors to consider. For example, I probably only purchased the bagged lettuce on the original receipt because it was on sale for $0.88. The same bagged lettuce cost $2.28 tonight, which is a price I would not normally pay for such an item. The same could be said for the yogurt, which was 6 for $2.00 in 2006 but 2 for $1.00 tonight. However, $0.50 per carton seems to be about the best price I can find for yogurt these days. The boneless, skinless chicken breasts increased by $1.89, the Cherry 7-UP increased by $0.57, and the coffee creamer increased by $0.22. The frozen burritos decreased by $0.20 each. Boy was Chris excited to see those burritos in the house again.

There is almost a seven month gap between these two receipts; however, the total charge for the two was exactly the same: $16.43. Imagine that! It is interesting that the price of skim milk dropped by $0.10, but the price of bananas increased by $0.06 per pound. Thus, the two receipts came out to the same price.

So, what conclusions can we draw from this? It's hard to say. It seems that most prices have increased slowly over time, but smart shopping and deal searching can usually make up for that. However, I also know from experience that deals don't come easy for fresh products, such as fruits and vegetables, fresh meat and seafood, and health market items. Most of the deals are reserved for frozen foods and air fresheners. We can also conclude that our eating habits have gotten better over time, and we can see that Hy-Vee keeps enlarging the font size of their logo, thus an increase of 5.5 inches to the receipt tape in the last two years.