Look at the data, doom-and-gloomers food costs arent what you think

Voters have a God-given right to complain.That’s why we have politics. It wouldn’t hurt, though, if we occasionally took a minute to place our problems in historical context.Otherwise, we risk falling into a doom-and-gloom spiral that threatens to undo our grasp on reality. Take grocery prices.Polls show that two-thirds of the American public consider groceries to be “unaffordable.”The anxiety over prices is driving people to embrace socialist ideas like Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $70 million city-owned supermarket chain.And it’s the reason why many right-wing economic populists are pestering President Trump to stop fighting Iran so he can “focus” on lowering food prices.Sorry, but they’re all wrong: We’re not living through an unprecedented food crisis.In 1901, the average American family spent 42% of its disposable budget on food, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.In 1945 it was 23%.

In 1965 it was 15%.In 1985 it was around 12%.Today, per Agriculture Department calculations, it’s 9.7%.That number is driven by a historically high rate of dining out and having food delivered.If we remove eating out from the equation and measure only grocery and supermarket shopping, the average family spends just 7.9% of its budget on food — and a discriminating shopper can probably do better.None of this is even to mention that modern consumers have access to an amazing array of products and delicacies from around the globe that would have blown the minds of previous generations.The American diet is the most diverse in the world, incorporating a wide variety of cuisines and year-round availability of products that were once seasonal.Because of highly efficient global supply chains, a person can go to any big-box store in the nation and buy affordable produce from Central America, or beverages from Asia, or salmon from Scandinavia or curry from India.Even with all this, Americans spend far less of their income on food than any people in...