Christmas lunch is the latest victim of the cost of living crisis thanks to skyrocketing food prices.
Big jumps in the price of everything has pushed the consumer price index (CPI), which measures rises in the costs of goods, to much higher increases than we’ve been used to.
The CPI has mostly stayed at or below the Reserve Bank’s target range of 2 to 3 per cent annually for the past 10 years.
But after a COVID-induced dip in 2020, it began rising, shooting up sharply throughout last year.
While the rate of increase has started to slow this year, Australians are now paying 16 per cent more for goods and services than they were in December 2019 before COVID hit.
That means the traditional Christmas lunch, which is often the only time many spend big on expensive foods, costs a lot more than it did even two years ago.
We crunched the numbers and they showed that for a traditional family lunch of turkey with all the trimmings, plus ham would cost $192.
That’s $27 more than it did pre-pandemic — and it is a whopping $21 more expensive than at Christmas 2021.
Based on the Sydney CPI for each sub-category, there’s a been a 16 per cent increase on the price of traditional Christmas fare since December 2019.
Bread and cheese the biggest increases
Australian households spend 17 per cent of their budgets on food — the second-highest category after housing.
The previous years’ prices are based on the Sydney CPI for each sub-category.
Our festive menu includes 1 kilogram of prawns, a 3.8kg turkey, a 4.5kg smoked half leg of ham, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and Brussels sprouts.
For dessert, we’re also buying Christmas pudding and pavlova with cream and getting bottles of white and sparkling wine to wash it all down, before rounding it off with Camembert cheese.
The meal would feed about eight with leftovers and is based on the average price of everything from shopping at Coles, Aldi or Woolworths.
Anyone who likes cheese will have noticed rising prices well before Christmas, with the category up 28 per cent since the end of 2019.
Our wheel of Camembert costs $11.45 this year, up from $8.
The price of cheese is up by 15 per cent in the year to September, closely followed by bread on 12 per cent, the highest rises in the food category of the CPI.
Farmgate milk prices are responsible for the increase in dairy products, according to the ABS.
A Christmas turkey costs about $32 this Christmas, up from about $26 in 2019.
While the December quarter CPI data won’t be released until next year, there was some good news in the monthly inflation data for October.
The price of poultry fell by 0.7 per cent, cheese by 0.4 per cent and vegetables by 2.1 per cent from September to October.
Economist Gigi Foster from the University of NSW said “luck of the harvest” affects fruit and vegetable prices and bumper crops have helped lower the cost.
“If you look at particular categories, that where we make our own food, and we’ve actually been pretty lucky with the elements, there actually hasn’t been quite as much of an increase as other areas,” she said.
How to make Christmas lunch more affordable
Professor Foster said shopping around at independent stores, farmers and Christmas markets and avoiding the large supermarket chains was the best way to save money.
“We get these sort of mark-ups that companies can get away with because there’s not that much competition in a lot of different sectors. And certainly the grocery sector is one of those,” she said.
Professor Foster said shopping around in independent specialty stores not only saves money but sends a message to the major companies by rewarding suppliers who give consumers the goods for less money.
“Because that’s how they find out that they are they’re not going to survive is that the customers walk away, because the prices are too high.”
The Greens this month spearheaded a Senate inquiry to interrogate price setting by the supermarkets giants.
Buying in season is another way to save money.
A glut of fruit and vegetables hit the market when the harvest comes in, causing prices to drop.
“So if you are prepared, like if you have a fridge or freezer, you can buy 5 kilos of peaches or something and then just store it, freeze it,” Professor Foster said.
“You can actually partially immunise yourself against future increases in price.”
She also suggests “rebalancing” the shopping cart by substituting foods from other categories that might be cheaper, for example roasting chicken instead of lamb and using almond instead of cow’s milk.
“It gives you a lot of opportunities to try new things, you know. We’ve had really interesting and fun experiences, trying new smoothies, new recipes for stuff, you know, just to take advantage of the things that are in season,” she said.