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The 14.6% "Food and non-alcoholic beverages" explicitly excludes alcohol.

"The largest upward effects came from bread and cereals, meat products, and milk, cheese and eggs, where prices rose between August and September 2022, but fell between the same two months in 2021."

"Alcohol and Tobacco" has gone up 5.6%.

Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull...

right but I quoted "food and drink spending"

that doesn't seem to me specific to the 14.6% figure.

supermarket spending != food and drink spending != food and non alcoholic beverage spending.

I dunno, man. All cereals, dairy, meat, legumes, and eggs are well above 14% from last year for me, and I'm in the USA, which has a much bigger native agricultural base than the UK. Fruits and veggies are holding pretty stable, it's true, but that's not enough caloric sustenance.

”with producer costs soaring double digits in eggs, flour, butter, crackers, bread, milk, and chicken.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2022/09/12/how-p...

Another n=1, everything I buy at the grocery store has gone up in price but it does seem like the more highly processed the food is, the larger the percentage increase in price. There are some notable exceptions, especially eggs and cream cheese but at least in my area, beef and pork hasn't risen in price anywhere near as much as things like Hot Pockets and ice cream.

You're probably right in the sense that few people actually go for the absolute necessity only at the lowest price they can find even without any alcohol.

If you look at a typical trolley I'd wager that most people/families could cut its price quite a bit and still be fed satisfactorily if they absolutely had no choice.

Not sure if you’d win that bet or not but my anecdata is that me and probably the majority of my social circle spend near-0 on alcohol and sweets. They/we buy good quality food and that became mighty expensive.

No I think youre probably right

the uk spends £117.97 on food and non alcoholic drinks annually https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

£27 billion on alcohol consumption in the home https://www.statista.com/statistics/281935/spending-on-alcoh...

savory snacks seem to be around £3bn, sweets around £6bn, and the soft drink market around £10bn

So it doesn't really get close, no matter how you slice it.

total supermarket spend is £188bn

https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/market-size/superma...

So actual food still makes up the majority of sales, which im surprised by.

I don't think people spend a majority on sweets and alcohol, but even if we think about 'non essentials'. For example, you can buy flour and make bread. premade bread is essentially discretionary.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it makes people less economically productive. Having my wife stay home and do home-made everything would certainly reduce our total grocery spending, but she's quite likely to be less economically productive spending her full time doing household work.

given that we're also getting rid of our dishwasher, washing machine, fridge, and everything else. if my wife would just roll up her sleves we could save even more money!

There are balances to be had. Long ago when I worked in a grocery store, I could cut a watermelon into quarters, wrap each up in plastic, and slap a label on each of them in under 30 seconds. Those watermelon quarters each sold for more than double the price of an entire watermelon. Even if you include the time to bring watermelons to the back room, return the slices to the sales floor, and then the refrigeration costs and opportunity costs of using highly visible space for the slices, it was still a huge markup for what couldn't have been more than a minute of labor on average.

Bread and watermelon are incommensurate. Bread is a staple.

No, thats why I didn't go into that at all. theres always stuff you can do to lower your food bill.

youre right about alcohol / sweet spending, its still a significant proportion that is discretionary though.