Food shock: Prices rise more than 100 percent in one year

Some of the foods Norwegians buy most often in stores have increased by between 50 and 100 per cent in one year, according to a comprehensive price check by VG. – We have seen a continuous rise in prices, says the economics professor.

– Did we notice that? Yes, of course. Especially at dinner.

The rise in food prices has not gone unnoticed by Torsten Dingstad Raunholm (23).

On Friday afternoon, he was shopping with his wife, Sneva Dingstad-Ronholm, 21. They’re both students with part-time jobs — and happily married.

– Now we are two, so it is useful to share the expenses, adds Sneva.

– But an ordinary noodle dinner, which should be a reasonable everyday dish, quickly becomes very expensive. She says the meatloaf alone costs about NOK 70.

What does high food prices mean to you?

We eat less vegetables. The diet becomes more unhealthy. It’s cheaper to turn to ultra-processed foods instead of fruits and vegetables, says Sniva.

This week, VG checked the prices of 77 popular grocery stores in Rema 1000, Kiwi, Meny, Coop Mega, Extra and Oda home delivery.

64 items in the cart are the same as when VG ran a similar check in September 2022. The comparison shows that low cost chainslow cost chainsRima 1000, Kiwi, Extra and Oda. They became 13-14 percent more expensive in one year.

Some products stand out significantly with the sharp increase in prices.

Weekend meals are more expensive

If you were to buy tomatoes in bulk or Peppe’s Pizza Triple Meat frozen pizza, you’d have to spend more than twice as much now as you did at the same time last year.

Meanwhile, the price of a kilogram of Norwegian yellow cheese has increased by more than 60 percent. Now it costs 129 NOK!

If you want to treat yourself to something at the weekend, you will have to pay close to NOK 40 for Freya’s milk chocolate. This is NOK 15 more than last year – a 60 percent price increase.

The cost of the mentioned products is exactly the same in the four low-priced series Kiwi, Rema 1000, Extra and Oda.

Here you can see which items have gone up and down the most since September last year.

The tables use prices in Kiwi, which was the cheapest on VG’s last food exchange.

– Follow each other closely

For these individual products, it is reasonable to suppose that the price increase was much greater than we think they received in the increased purchase prices.

This is what Professor Oystein Voros at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) tells VG.

He adds that the price trend among the lower priced chains has been different this year.

– In the run-up to Easter, discount chains burned money by backtracking. This may have been the result of an increased focus on price among consumers. Since Easter, we have seen a steady rise in prices.

On the VG food exchange, 73 prices out of 77 in the discount chains are exactly the same. If you include Oda, the 57 prices are the same.

– It is primarily an expression that the lower price chains follow one another very closely. Foros says it hurts them more than supermarkets to draw attention to why prices aren’t low enough.

Disputes increased margins

Kiwi explains the significant increase in the prices of the aforementioned items by the fact that they were sold at a promotional price at the same time last year.

– In August this year, the same products were not on sale, but we have many other products on sale, says Communications Director Christine Akvaj Arvin.

She suspects the chain has increased its margins.

– on the contrary. In the past six months, we have received strong increases from suppliers. The price increases we’ve received over the past six months are higher than the price increases you’re seeing in stores.

NHH professor Aakvaag Arvin provides the correct explanation for similar prices.

– Kiwi works every day to be the cheapest. In addition to driving prices ourselves, we also track our lower-cost competitors. If we find a similar item, of the same weight or size, at a lower price, we will reduce the price as soon as possible.

You can watch VG’s food exchange in full here: