Peter Leeds Warns: Food Inflation About to Get WORSE

Ajouté : 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]I want to talk to you about what's on a lot of our minds. Is these grocery prices that we're seeing. And it's not just the actual prices, it's also the types of ingredients they're using, how much you get in a box, how many slices you get in a loaf. It all comes together to paint one big picture as all things that we talk about generally do.

[00:00:18]So I'm going to show you what is happening, why it's happening, what's going to happen next for grocery prices, and how that's going to affect you in a big, big way.

[00:00:27]According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices increased 3.1% over the past year, while USAFacts says that grocery prices specifically rose by 2.1%. And while that might not sound that extreme, here's the issue of what's going on.

[00:00:43]You never see prices drop. So they may It's like a ratchet. They may go up 3% and they never they come down 3% usually. They'll go up 3% and then they'll stay there and then they'll go up another couple percent when they rise. They increase with inflation, but they don't decline even with the decline in inflation in some cases. So they're rising 2%, 3%, but that's on top of already elevated prices because groceries have increased as you'll see in this video. I'm going to tell you what happened 5 years ago or what they were like 20 years ago or what they were like 50 years ago. And here's the point though, that these increases of 2%, 3%, that's on top of already inflated prices.

[00:01:16]So grocery prices double, triple as years go by. They could go up another They increase 3% on a larger base.

[00:01:23]And just like the video with Todd Hubert in the commodity supercycle, how you don't notice it as much because they're moving in individual components right now. So some go up, some go down, and they bounce around and you don't notice the actual motion or the movement or the trend of any of the underlying assets. That's the same thing with food prices, which is why a lot of people are not seeing it for as bad as it is because a lot of things actually came down price. A lot of things held their ground. But then when you look at things like ground beef, that's up 20% in 1 year. Coffee, produce, even meat are rising faster than average. This is prices are never dropping down, it doesn't seem like, and they're not reducing the number of granola bars you get in the box and then they eventually later replace that number. Everything shrinks and shrinks and shrinks or gets more expensive and more expensive. But let's zoom out as I promised, 5 years, and look at what grocery prices were like then compared to now. Food prices since 2020 have surged about 23 to 24% total and that's according to the Economic Research Service.

[00:02:17]That means that a $100 grocery bill in 2020 is about $123 to $125 today. And from 5 years ago, coffee prices are up 100%, beef prices are up 30%, and often lettuce you'll see at 40% more than it used to be. That's just 5 years. And over that time, it wasn't as though anyone's wages kept up with the pace of the inflation. Now it gets interesting.

[00:02:38]Let's go back 20 years. 2005 we'll go from.

[00:02:41]Food inflation averaged roughly 2 to 3% per year long-term according to the Economic Research Service, which means that prices are roughly 60 to 80% higher than 20 years ago. Milk went from $2.50 to $4, ground beef from $2 or $3 to $6, bread from $1 or $2 to $3 to $4. But what's the difference is that if you go back then till now, it was more gradual and we're seeing more significant spikes in a very short window of time more recently.

[00:03:08]That's showing you a beginning of an acceleration as we'll get into. And I'll go through this to round it out, 50 years ago grocery prices, and then we're going to talk about what's going to happen next and how that's going to affect you and literally everyone you know. Now if you take it back to the 1970s, over the last 50 years, bread cost 25 cents to 30 cents for a loaf of bread, milk was about a dollar a gallon, ground beef was a dollar a pound. Are you guys seeing the effects and the impacts of inflation? Why I'm always telling you that they're diluting the currency supply, the printing too much money, and they're taking on way too many expenses, don't have enough income coming in from taxation, from other sources to pay for things that we consume already.

[00:03:47]We'll buy something and use it and then we just have to figure out if we're going to have a government shutdown or a default or if we're going to pay the bill for what we've already received.

[00:03:56]Compared to today, now bread is $3 to $4, milk's $4 to $5, beef's at $6 to $10. That's a 300 to 800% increase depending on the item. And yes, income has gone up a lot over that time. Even assets like houses have increased in price a lot. In most cases that hasn't kept up with inflation and certainly not in relation to your hourly wages. What's important is that food inflation spikes today are the highest since the late 1970s according to the Inflation Calculator US.

[00:04:25]So we're seeing something that's happening right now that hasn't happened in generations. And it isn't just one thing or one reason that's causing this.

[00:04:31]That's why most people aren't having a great time putting their finger on it.

[00:04:34]I'll tell you all the things that are going into why prices are going to continue to rise and how far they may go. Is fertilizer cost more, be less available. There's supply shocks from going back to the pandemic, but war and global trade issues, weather problems that hurt crops. You've got higher input costs now with the war in the Middle East, you've got higher diesel and fuel oil costs.

[00:04:56]Labor costs have even increased pretty dramatically. There's been shortages of chicken sometimes when they cull the herds or sometimes with meat. And shortages like that lead to higher prices for things like eggs and beef.

[00:05:07]And it takes sometimes generations, years and years to rebuild a herd. If you have to cull a bunch of your chickens or cull a bunch of your cattle, it takes a long time to replenish all those missing units.

[00:05:20]So looking ahead, according to Yahoo Finance, grocery prices are expected to increase by about 2.5% this year. Well some items are spiking a lot more than others. But I disagree with the outlook that was posted in Yahoo Finance because this is an acceleration. It's a quickening. It's a moment where all of a sudden all the signs are telling you inflation prices are just going to roll and roll and go. And the least of it is more dollars chasing fewer goods.

[00:05:46]A big part of it is that a lot of people who do a lot of the work for the agriculture are hiding from ICE basically or not taken by ICE. And who's going to go out in the fields there and work the fields? Not Porsche and not Preston.

[00:06:00]There's a lot of other too, but the big one is the Middle East, all the war going on there. This is going to have a massive, massive worldwide effect forever in time.

[00:06:10]And it's not going to go the way that anyone in Western Hemisphere seems to think it's going.

[00:06:17]And the result of that is going to be an extended disruption to the supply chains that impact everything from helium to oil.

[00:06:27]It's going to start to hit us now. We haven't really felt it. They're running out of jet fuel. There's a lot less commercial flights going anywhere. And it'll get worse and worse and worse and worse until things start winding down. They're not winding down at all. They're just getting more and more accelerated because even today the Iranians took two ships.

[00:06:46]The Americans have taken over two ships over the day before that. Anything that's imported is going to cost a significant amount more. Coffee is going to be one of them. So grocery prices aren't high. They're just on a path to go to much higher levels. They've always, always, always been increasing, increasing, increasing. Go back 50 years and we'll be beyond that too.

[00:07:04]Just like the monetary creation, it never decreases. It just expands and expands or sits still and sits still and then expands and expands.

[00:07:13]Same thing with grocery prices because it's a reflection of how many dollars you need to buy that loaf of bread.

[00:07:19]It's all connected. It's all one thing.

[00:07:21]Food costs are going to become one of the most significant or the largest expenses for any regular household. That's something that everyday people and regular investors cannot ignore. You can't ignore it. I can't ignore it. Your friends can't ignore it. Your relatives can't.

[00:07:36]If you want to keep an eye on this kind of stuff and know what to do about it because one thing you can do is to avoid inflation, the worst parts of it, and benefit and position yourself in the right places and situate yourself in the right ways that you can outperform inflation.

[00:07:50]You want to get to know how to do that, to keep an eye on the ball with all this stuff, macroeconomic events, prices of commodities, high quality, low priced stock picks that pass 29 point leads analysis.

[00:08:01]Then stick around. You can get more information from me. Get in contact with me directly. Learn all this stuff. Learn all about it at peterleads.com.

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