The price of the cheapest pasta in UK supermarkets has increased by half in just a year as households deal with the rise in inflation, figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said that pasta prices rose 50% between April 2021 and this year.
The stats tracked the increases in the price of the lowest-cost items in British supermarkets. They chose 30 everyday items that the least well-off households buy regularly in a bid to get an idea of how much inflation is really hitting poorer people.
They trained algorithms to select the cheapest possible alternatives on the websites of supermarkets such as Asda, the Co-op, Iceland, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose, and tracked the price over the year. Aldi and Lidl are among the cheapest supermarkets in the country, but they were not included as they do offer online shopping reports Wales Online.
READ MORE: DWP: Everyone on these 7 disability benefits to get £150 boost - including PIP
The data found that pasta prices increased at the fastest rate, closely followed by crisps (17%), bread (16%), minced beef (16%) and rice (15%). However, it was not all bad as some prices did decrease, potatoes (14%), cheese (7%), pizza (4%), chips (3%), sausages (3%) and apples (1%).
The latest stats come as experts have recently warned that the poorest households in the country are struggling with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Along with that, inflation has hit a 40-year high of 9% in April, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, those who are least well off spend a larger proportion of their income on the basics, such as energy bills.
As a result, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested that inflation for the poorest households ran at 10.9% in the year to April. The latest ONS analysis indicates that, at least for the 30 items it chose, inflation for the cheapest alternatives has been running similar to overall food and alcohol prices, increasing by between 6% and 7%.
However, it does not take into account the costs associated with buying a product. For instance potato prices have dropped significantly over the last year, but many struggling households avoid potatoes, because they take longer to boil than alternatives and therefore use more expensive gas.
In March the boss of Iceland said that some food bank users were turning down potatoes and other root vegetables because they could not afford to boil them. The ONS acknowledged that the research it has done is “highly experimental”.
It warned that because the analysis only focuses on the lowest-priced goods the estimates are based on a very small number of price quotes. This means that the data is very sensitive to changes in just one item.
“The available products represent the retailer’s online catalogue, rather than the range of products available or bought in local stores that month,” the ONS said.
READ NEXT:
