A new metric for understanding food prices

A closer look at meat cuts, carb types and produce varieties

By Forrest J.H.

A new metric for understanding food prices has come to Oven Light Journal

The new measurements include in-depth aspects of meats, fruits and grains essential to the everyday American diet. The ticker showing food prices at the top of the website’s home page will reflect OLJ’s new methodology.

New metrics break down beef prices by cut, grain prices by type, and fruit prices by the most commonly-eaten varieties.

Previous methodologies for measuring food prices relied too heavily on specific products to indicate trends. New measurements include more finely-detailed metrics to better show how food prices are changing and which kinds of products are driving those changes.

OLJ’s metrics are based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ prices as indicated in its monthly Consumer Price Index. As such, the Journal’s numbers reflect similar biases. Those biases lean toward the typical American diet, which focuses on beef, chicken and pork for protein; bread, flour and rice for carbs; bananas, oranges and tomatoes for fruit-based nutrition.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics notably omits particular cuts of chicken and pork, grain types, and canned tomatoes in its monthly price reports. While OLJ’s metrics are reflective of a certain American diet, those metrics still lack key nuances. The Labor Department and the American public would benefit from a closer evaluation of ground chicken, ground pork, oats, bread flour, whole wheat flour, corn, potatoes, beans, and canned vegetables, as those ingredients are as integral to the American diet as steak, eggs and milk.

However, the American diet, as we know it, continues to change. Consumer desire is as diverse as the public, and will continue to diversify alongside it. Therefore, a continually evolving analysis of food prices is necessary; an analysis that includes food trends as they relate to culture, economics and a multitude of intangible factors that influence how people eat. 

A perfect system for measuring food prices will never exist.

Oven Light Journal strives to publish the best system for measuring food prices possible for an independent news outlet. This methodology is beholden to nobody and nothing except the limitations of human patience. This methodology does not portend to any “correct” way of eating. This methodology is published in recognition of the biases that outline the American diet as understood by official state sources.