How have prices changed in a year? NPR checked 114 items at Walmart

Thanks to NPR for this important reporting; it sucks that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down after losing all of its funding.

This "basked of goods" approach to understanding price inflation seems outdated to me. 114 items! It seems to me like there must be organizations out there with tons and tons of price and consumer spending data for thousands and thousands of items, right? It should be possible to get much more comprehensive measurement of price changes over time vs and approach taken like this one (or the CPI, for that matter).

The physical size of charmin changed during the pandemic.

Good to track this yearly since some standard metrics are useless versus the shrinkflation, reduction in quality ingredients, and other manipulation we’ll learn about sooner or later.

Many ice creams are now dairy desserts due to not having enough ingredients to make the cut. Same with milk chocolates and now declared chocolate candy due to not using enough real cocoa.

Going out and checking prices independently of official numbers has been thing for a while:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project

Generally peer-reviewed papers have shown the official CPI numbers are fairly accurate.

At least Walmart is likely to honor the price on the shelf. Dollar stores often just change prices without updating the shelf, so you don't know what you're going to pay until you get to the register. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...

the price of name brand soda is outrageous. I remember when it was around a dollar a bottle not long ago, now it's basically 3 dollars a bottle. I can't think of a good explanation for this. It's water and subsidized corn syrup.

FWIW, a frugal person can't simply think to eat whatever has declined in price... It's worth realizing that, for example, a 20% rise on the 0.33 ramen is still one of your cheapest options.

From my perspective (ie, in the USA) it can still be hella cheap if you're willing to cook food yourself from scratch. Rice, Beans, Lentils, and frozen veggies can give you the baseline of very nutritious meals (but boring af) for like $2 a day.

you can eat (all dry/unprepared weight) 100g white rice, 100g black beans, 100g black lentils, 225g frozen mixed veggies for about $1 if you buy in small bulk (like 2-5lbs at a time)

Cue outrage from the conservative administration for checks notes quality journalism.

This was really informative!

A recent job loss forced me to look harder at my own financials, and I was surprised just how much things like groceries accounts for in overall spending. I'm making a habit this year of, at the end of each day, recording what I spent and on what - so I can get better data.

I appreciate what NPR did here. Taking into account price per ounce/square foot/etc is essential so I'm glad they did.

It's useful to see these kinds of changes, can help make decisions. If company X is shrinking product Y, maybe it's time to look for an off-brand instead? That's what I'll be doing for a lot of things.

We're really sorely missing something like "semver for food".

I don't have deep food industry knowledge, IIRC there are some rules around SKUs needing to rotate in response to certain changes, but these are completely opaque to customers. People should know they're eating snickers 12.2.2, and while a sub-1% change to one ingredient's amount might be a patch bump, a 10% total weight reduction should absolutely trigger a major version bump. SKU and nutrition labels should be tied to a public changelog, and inaccuracies in that changelog should proportionally imperil manufacturer solvency.

I'm surprised the US doesn't try doing chocolate growing in some of it's big empty, hot states.

It would be interesting to see inflation indexes based on different typical buyers, to include the ultra rich. Basically, inflation isn't uniform and impacts people differently. Of course that brings up how you actually measure the impact of inflation to the ultra rich when the price of corn flakes is meaningless and their personal purchase are negligible. Maybe you look at how much the cost to buy a politician has gone up?

> swai fish fillets from Vietnam (up 34%)

Swai is perhaps the worst possible fish to buy (low nutritional value, bad for environment, contains toxins) so (a) it's unfortunate they picked this fish and (b) it's good it's more expensive since perhaps people will buy less of it.

would be interesting to reveal the holding company behind each brand and what impact they had on products

> As affordability became Americans' top concern, big brands began to worry about shoppers switching to store-label competitors or skipping some purchases altogether.

I think, at least in the last year-or-so, big brands also became worried about getting flamed by the president for raising prices.

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Wages and energy have not increased. Tariffs on food are basically non existent for most items.

It's 100% purely supply side pricing, propped up by government spending and credit (which is largely backstopped by the government as well).

I listened to a podcast recently that some 'homeowners' have not made a mortgage payment in years, have no ability to pay, but here are essentially unlimited 'no doc' mortgage modifications available since the Corona time period.

What a poorly-built site. There is a cookie banner covering a popover solicitation for donations, covering an inset photo/caption which itself is covered by a cookie banner (wtf?) ... closed the tab.

For the love of god- I can't understand why people buy paper towels. It makes zero sense. It's expensive, you throw it after a use. I started using cloth towels and life is so much better.

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that people thought the president would make any really impact on inflation. That said, with global conditions improving it looks like we could've actually seen a drastically larger reduction in inflation if not for the tariffs. The goals of the tariffs seem so misaligned with what the country needs - again not surprising that we're doing something the opposite of what we need - and again also not surprising that his supporters don't seem to care.

The article text cites a comment about ice cream becoming unaffordable.

The numbers show reduced prices for milk and butter (e.g. cream), and sugar remaining constant.

Thus: ice cream is being priced too high.