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Liz Pulliam Weston

The Basics

High food prices? Here's how to save

Prices for eggs, milk and flour have soared in the past year, rising faster than other staples. Experts share their secrets for stretching your food dollar.

By Liz Pulliam Weston

Every trip to the grocery store seems to bring another shock. Bread. Butter. Eggs. Milk. Cheese. Even beer hasn't escaped the sudden resurgence of food inflation.

As painful as rising gas prices have been, big jumps in food prices are worse because we spend so much more of our budgets feeding ourselves (12.8%, on average) than we do feeding our cars (3.4%).

To help you cope, I consulted the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the Consumer Price Index, to find the five foods that had soared the most in price between March 2007 and March 2008.

Then I turned to a trio of seriously smart shoppers to find out how to save money on those particular items.

And the winners of the most inflated foodstuffs are (drumroll, please):

  • Flour, up 37%.

  • Eggs, up 34.8%.

  • Sweet peppers, up 29.2%.

  • Milk, up 23.1%.

  • Dried beans, up 21.6%.

That last one is particularly painful. I can't count the times I've told some debt-addled reader to reduce expenses by "eating beans and rice if you have to!" Oh, yeah, and rice is up 10% in a month; some warehouse stores are starting to limit bulk sales because of stockpiling.

The causes of food inflation are many, with the importance of each dependent on which expert you quote. Among the most commonly cited:

  • Speculation in commodity markets.

  • Bad weather.

  • Rising global demand, particularly in China and India.

  • The weak dollar.

  • Higher transport (fuel) costs.

Video on MSN Money

Bread © Corbis
Are we headed toward a food crisis?
With food prices rising across the world, especially for staples, some experts fear a global hunger crisis is ahead.

There's not much you can do about any of those factors, but there are plenty of ways to control and trim your food budget.

For help in reducing these particular food costs, I turned to Amy Bergin, the creator of the Couponizer, a coupon organizing system; Stephanie Nelson of The Coupon Mom; and Julie Parrish, the owner of Hot Coupon World.

Here's what they had to say, item by item, along with some reader tips and general bonus advice about the best ways to bring down your food bills.

Continued: Save money on flour and eggs

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