Here is the number that matters when you are standing at the register. Food costs 3.1 percent more than it did a year ago, and the groceries you carry home are up 2.7 percent. [1] That is the federal government's own count, out this month. [1] The promise was that prices would come down. The shelf did not get the memo.
THE NUMBERS (year over year, May)
- All food: up 3.1%
- Groceries, food at home: up 2.7%
- Fresh tomatoes: up 32%
Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2026 CPI [1]
Some of it lands harder than the average lets on. A pound of fresh tomatoes runs 32 percent more than last spring. [1] An average is cold comfort when the item that jumped is the one in your cart.
Look down the road and it does not ease up much. The Agriculture Department now expects grocery prices to rise 2.8 percent across 2026, and food overall 3.2 percent. [2] Both sit above their twenty-year averages. [2] That is not a return to normal. It is a slower climb, and a climb is still a climb.
WHO FEELS IT
- A 3 percent grocery year is a tax on the cart, paid hardest by the families who spend the most of their paycheck on food.
- "Cooling inflation" still means higher prices, not lower ones.
- The total at the register is the only poll that counts.
Here is the play, plain. Prices rising slower is not prices falling. The number on the receipt went up again this year, the way it went up last year, and the family doing the math at the end of the aisle knew it before the government confirmed it. Anybody telling you the grocery problem is solved has not pushed a cart lately.
