The CPI is a Lie: Keeping Up With Inflation Means Downgrading Your Diet
Inflation heavily penalized the maintenance of a healthy diet. Each decade saw such a diet get relatively more expensive, especially for categories like red meat and dairy. In contrast, Americans who embraced cheaper substitutes and new, processed foods managed to keep their food spending growth below the inflation that a healthy diet would incur. This behavior-adjustment – switching from costly whole foods to economical processed and alternative foods – has been a key reason the reported CPI for food rose more slowly. But it obscures the fact that quality of life has dropped and health has declined.
