A basket of 24 staples.

[senji]

In my earlier article I discussed the BBC's reporting of some research done by mysupermarket.co.uk on food prices. I omitted detailed discussion of the research and the validity of the conclusions based upon it because it wasn't relevant there, however some people may be interested so

Comments

[kaet]

Well researched. It does seem rather strange. Perhaps the sugar is substituting for sugar-dominated misc products like sweets?

[ext_72852]

the whole thing doesn't seem to be Hard Science. However on the choice of shopping - perhaps they are all things that /might/ be included in the weekly shop - one week you would run out of sugar and buy 500g and another week run out of rice and pick up a kg pack. only considering packages small enough to be consumed during a week might result in some bias.

I have an image of several people sitting around in an office, calling out "what should we include in a 'weekly' shop", starting with the easy ones, bread, fruit, milk, and then winding down a bit; one person saying "have you put in jam yet? My kids eat /loads/ of jam!" and someone else saying "omg! Tea! We forgot tea!" and so on.

[robert_jones]

In addition isn't it odd that they've scaled up a £24 a week basket of goods to £100 a week? Presumably a family spending £100 a week buy significantly different things from a family spending £24 a week.

I do however find it very odd that CPI inflation is 2.5%, when everything seems to be getting expensive much faster than that. I haven't done any analysis, it just doesn't feel right.

[hmmm_tea]

The £24 is based on a family of 4, so perhaps the £100 is for a family of 16/17.

[robert_jones]

Oh yes, of course. That would represent the typical British family.

[ghoti]

That basket does not read like a family spending £24 a week so much as a section of a family spending £100 a week. Cook in sauces, for example, are much more expensive that making one's own, and there's not nearly enough food.