Food products: Eurispes statistical survey on food prices in 2003

The cost of food for Italian families was up 29% in one year, far more than the 3.8% that Istat claims is the inflationary increase between November 2002 and November 2001 for the item “Foodstuffs non-alcoholic drinks”. This is the result of the statistical survey on food prices carried out by Eurispes.

The difference is so significant that it was wondered whether it depended on the different calculation methods since Eurispes works on the average of changes in individual prices, while Istat works on changes in average prices. Therefore, Eurispes calculated the price increase using the ISTAT methodology, and in fact, the variation was much smaller, equal to +13%, but still three times higher than that reported by the Central Institute of Statistics.

This increase in food prices corresponds precisely to what we have all experienced when we go shopping. There is no doubt that this is the inflation that families have to put up with, forcing them either to spend a lot more, or to reduce the quality of their food, or to waste more time on their daily shopping by choosing cheaper but more unfriendly outlets (and in this case, one would have to calculate the costs and inconvenience of having to search for the lowest price).