The American Food Budget

This is a stacked chart that shows the combined retail sales of food and beverage stores with food service and drinking places, adjusted for inflation and population.

As can be seen, that amount has held fairly constant over time.

If the government has been vastly underreporting consumer price inflation as some of the more fear mongering sites have proclaimed, then where is it in the chart?

It is my belief that more inflation is coming in the long-term (and it will show up in our CPI). We've "eaten" up much of the deflationary goodness brought to us by billions of people willing to work for peanuts. Now they are starting to eat what we eat.

See Also:
Eating Out vs. Eating at Home
Strategic Pig Reserves (SPR)

Source Data:
Food Service and Drinking Places Sales
Food and Beverage Store Sales
Consumer Price Indexes (CPI)
St. Louis Fed: Population Data