Has food prices risen again this month?

[Lifeisnotsimple]

Been shopping today and I go to various shops to keep the cost down but even Aldi has added 10/20p to everyday items. Farmfoods is the only shop that seems to still have value. We,ve moved away from branded foods but even they are being hiked up, dont buy biscuits/cake, crisps or sweets anymore. When you go shopping now foods like tesco value oats etc the shelves are bare, Ive always bought them but now it seems more people are to. Tesco fresh rolls used to be lovely but now seem undercooked and doughy, so stopped buying them. I do a monthly shop and from last month it seems alot more expensive, not sure if this is my imagination.

@PrimalScreamingalso I have seen thousands of sloes this year after there being almost none last year. We are making him for Xmas presents.

i love a forage. We forage lots of pet food too. Bloody rabbit and guinea pigs. They love it though little buggers.

Some mention of food inflaiton here:

Bank of England cuts interest rates as it warns food costs could push inflation to 4%

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/07/bank-of-england-cuts-interest-rates-quarter-point-4

For anyone wanting to make slow cooker Greek Yoghurt:

You will need a starter (same as sourdough) so buy a small pot of LIVE Greek yoghurt to start you off. After that you will need to keep back about 3 tablespoons of your old yoghurt to start your next.

Pour 4pt bottle of whole milk into slow cooker
Put on high for 3 hours
Switch to off for 2 hours
Add about 3 tablespoons of live yoghurt starter and stir well
Wrap slow cooker in towels to keep warmth in and leave overnight (I usually start the process about 4pm so I can wrap it up before bedtime!)
Leave overnight (switched off)
Strain through muslin / net the next morning and the longer you leave it straining the thicker it will be
Jar and keep in the fridge for up to a week!

That's it really and you will get a very large amount. You can either pour the whey away or use it in making pancakes.

Depending on your slow cooker you may find you have to play around with the timings slightly until you get a feel for it. Mine is pretty old and sometimes I give it a 5 min blast of heat again before bed but don't leave it more than a few mins or you will kill the live bacteria.

Yes! We do that too! Although more expensive as you obviously have to buy the gin, but still cheaper for gifts!

For the compote I make it up as I go along depending on what other fruit I have. But generally I preserve the apples by coring, peeling & slicing (into salt water or water with lemon juice in or they turn brown before you can freeze) and freeze in bags /batches.
Take a bag out and can use from frozen... put in a large saucepan with just a drop of water added. Heat until boiling and apples begin to disintegrate. Add honey or sugar to taste and often a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Then add any other fruit. Often I will do a separate small pan of foraged blackberries (also washed and frozen) then strain them through a sieve to give juice and pulp without the seeds. Add this to the apple and reduce until a thick 'compote' consistency.
This will last in the fridge for a couple of weeks due to the honey acting as a preservative. depends on the apples how much honey or sugar you need to add (I tend to use Stevia instead of sugar sometimes)

Hope that helps! None of it is an exact science... you just get a feel for what works over time. We eat it every day with granola as a 'brunch'!

Oh there’s always one 🤣

farmer here.

Lots of us are now on link contracts with the supermarkets, so if our input costs go up so does the price we get paid. It covers the basics like labour, electric etc. Tje increase in NMW has had a huge impact in farming and food processing. Also things like water. Most households water bills are going up by huge amounts, well so is ours and we use a lot!!

Thank you @PrimalScreamingthats lots of ideas for me I appreciate it so much! Was thinking it would be good for milk close to it’s use by date too

@InsanityPolarity

People believe the propaganda that's fed to them.

It's not insanely greedy multinationals etc it's migrants etc.

Just to update, Lidl refunded the money to my card for the overpayment! Has to email customer relations and they were very apologetic and offered money back on the app or card refund. Was no hassle.

If you have a slow cooker and apples, you can make slow cooker apple butter ( which is a thick apple spread, there is no dairy involved)

l cannot believe the price of this. I used to get them for 99p for 6 in our local pound shop a few years ago.

Good! I find Lidl very reasonable to deal with if there’s a problem

I eat one meal a day to afford my dogs prescription food

Cheaper in Asda the flake ice creams

We have an allotment. It's a little strip of land from a private provider, no dig and they give you the plug plants once a month or so. Tbh I signed up half because my parents have always grown a lot of what they eat and I was completely useless and needed somewhere to figure it out without ruining our garden if everything died.

It has been a complete gift. The rocket took off like... a rocket. We've had armfuls of chard every week. Even stuff I hardly bothered to look at such as cabbages and kohlrabi started off as spindly little leaves and somehow magically became... cabbages and kohlrabi. We've had enough potatoes and squashes for a year.

We're lucky to live somewhere we could get an allotment, but it has been a weird kind of reminder of what is normal for my parents in terms of abundance and value and isn't at all normal for us.

It's scary. I feel like food prices have always been one of the bits of my budget that I could control. If I overspent, I could eat simply for a bit and rebalance things. Unless we actually just ate porridge and dal, it doesn't feel like that's an option.

Good price inflation is back at levels seen after the pandemic. Thanks to this car crash of a shitty government and their disastrous economic policies. But then if you voted Labour, you are getting what you asked for.

Not much to do with the government according to Trading Economics.

The annual inflation rate in the UK rose to 3.6% in June 2025, the highest since January 2024, up from 3.4% in May and above expectations that it would remain unchanged. The main upward pressure came from transport prices, which increased by 1.7% (vs 0.7% in May), driven largely by motor fuel costs. Additional upward contributions came from airfares, particularly on long-haul and European routes, as well as rail fares and maintenance and repair of personal transport equipment. Clothing and footwear prices also rose (0.5% vs -0.3%) and food inflation climbed to 4.5%, the highest since February 2024, mainly due to cakes and cheddar cheese. On the other hand, services inflation remained steady at 4.7%, while inflation eased in housing and utilities (7.5% vs 7.7%) and household services (6.7% vs 6.9%). On a monthly basis, the CPI rose by 0.3%, above the 0.2% increase in May.

So the government then.

What control does the government have over oil prices?

What control could a government possibly have over energy policy? I mean it unthinkable that a government put the country first and stop chasing the idiotic, virtue signalling net 0 nonsense and actually focus on cheap home grown energy. And us not have the most expensive energy costs in the world.

On a windy day last week, it cost consumers in this country £30m to switch off the wind turbines, because wait for it….it was too windy. You could not make this shit up.

This is such a weird hill to die on though. Geothermal and seismic energy exists, but do you ever here them being dismissed because earthquakes might be too rumbly, or underground activity too active?

Wind turbines are a piece of mechanical engineering. They have a reasonable/safe loading capacity but work well 99% of the time.

What's so hard to understand about it?

Yeah, it’s fairly easy to see that net 0 is making the country poorer and adding to inflation. Because cheap plentiful energy is essential. Which we could have if our incompetent corrupt governments were engaged in this insanity.

Don't you ever dare to blame Labour.

Nothing to do with NI and NMW increases which affect retail and any other labour intense low margin businesses really badly, nothing to do with what farmer said above.

It's all external, our wonderful competent government are doing their best.

Oh well...

The increased cost of transportation - the biggest factor in inflation - is caused by an increase in oil prices which are controlled in the Middle East. What effect does the government have on that?