K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: ‘I can’t afford to eat’: Baton Rouge shoppers, grocery stores struggling under weight of inflation

Bethany Bissel & Robert Stewart:

Jada Gabriel goes grocery shopping for her family of four every two weeks. On her last trip, she noticed the price of butter had increased.

“It was normally 98 cents,” said Gabriel, an ophthalmic technician who was on a shopping trip Wednesday at the Hi Nabor Supermarket on Winbourne Avenue. “Now it’s $1.18.”

While Gabriel hasn’t changed her shopping schedule, she has been buying less at the store and is strategizing her family’s meals so each grocery trip lasts longer.

She doesn’t purchase as many snacks and treats, and she only buys meat items like ground beef that she can use to prepare multiple dishes. She buys the smallest tube to avoid high meat prices, and it only lasts a couple of meals.

“Talking about it stresses me out,” Gabriel said. “I can’t afford to eat.”

Gabriel isn’t alone. Baton Rouge area shoppers and grocery stores are shifting their strategies to combat the worst inflation in the U.S. in decades, which is having an outsized impact on food prices.

The Consumer Price Index, a mechanism for measuring how much average consumers are paying for goods and services, was up by 8.6% year-over-year in May, the steepest climb since 1981. Food prices alone have risen by more than 10% from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.