The increase in the price of food from October 2021 to October 2022

Also see my figures for July 21 to July 22.  And click on food prices label at the bottom to get all relevant blog posts.

According to this article food prices rose by 14.6% in the 12 months to September.

I do not think this figure can possibly be realistic.  According to the chart above, food prices have gone up by around a third compared to this time last year.

I should firstly state that I almost always pay the cheapest price I can pay.  Certain food products continually cycle up and down in price with their price being labelled an "offer" at the low end of the price cycle. I just stock up on the products when they are on "offer" and never buy them when they are not on offer (although I might have screwed up with the walnuts that I bought a year ago and bought them at the high end of the price cycle.  This will explain why the chart says they've gone down 11% in price.  In reality, this seems very unlikely). And I always compare to the current bottom end of the cycle prices, even though these prices might not be what one pays on this specific date.

For nuts and cheese that I've highlighted in yellow, they're now selling the same product in smaller packets, so have adjusted accordingly.

I'm not sure if I should include the price of salt, sugar, sweets, crisps and frozen chips due to various reasons (highlighted in orange at bottom of chart). Salt and sugar will only be rarely bought. Crisps and sweets are luxury foods. Frozen chips is repetitious since I have already included potatoes. So, if we exclude these products, then the average price increase is 33.5%. More than double the 14.6% that they claim.

But could the average be dragged down to 14.6% by incorporating other foods?  This seems very unlikely to me.  Just look at the number of food products that have increased by less than 14.6% compared to those that have increased by more than this figure.