Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

Supermarkets love me. Because I’m an undisciplined shopping spinner. 

I don’t see supermarkets as food emporiums, but rather entertainment. I can spend a thoroughly enjoyable hour browsing and buying – what I want, not what I need. 

I need toilet tissue but buy big plump kalamata olives and Castello blue; I need milk and eggs but buy tamarillos, tahini, black pudding, $2 tomatoes, Bluff oysters and a cab-sav. They’re my staples. 

I’m the bloke who drops in to the supermarket, forgets what he’s there for, but still spends $80. I can hear it now – a sanctimonious chorus of “write a note” but I’d forget where I put the note, or ignore it. I’m the supermarket’s version of a casino high roller – perhaps I need to self-trespass. 

I’m the guy in the supermarket who buys salmon for dinner, then opts for a sirloin, then ‘bone-in’ pork belly, gets home and feels like none of the above. Consequently, my refrigerator becomes a supermarket in itself…which in time becomes an internal compost. 

Chilli flakes on porridge?

There is, of course, the shopper at the other extreme of the spectrum – the tragically circumspect supermarket shopper, who I discovered down the dry goods aisle. Don’t normally go down there – as the name suggests dry, boring, hard to swallow. This shopper had a note, enough purchases in their trolley to launch an aid project in a third world country, and their mobile was overheating on the calculator function. 

This shopper carefully compared all price-per-unit information, the small print after the item price. A couple of cents saved here and here. But either you need or want the product, or you don’t. Why make hard work of it? Especially after processing all the other best buy, extra low, multi-buy, limited time, never-to-be-repeated, club card price information before investing in a pot of raspberry jam? 

Next morning as I sprinkled my porridge with chilli flakes – doesn’t everyone do that? – I reached out for something to read, something to take away from the slurry in front of me. 

It was a newspaper supermarket catalogue. Not a recent one, December 4, 1984, in fact – 40 years old. How I came by it I don’t know. It’s a fascinating, albeit depressing, commentary on food prices. 

Tough cheese 

Talk to anyone about food prices and they’ll bark on about the cost of cheese. Long, painfully, angrily. How did an essential become a luxury? The 1984 supermarket catalogue reveals I could have bought two 500g blocks of Mild, Medium, Colby, Tasty or Vintage for just $3.95. That’s right – a kilo of cheese for $3.95. By comparison the supermarket is today advertising online just one 500g block of Tasty or Colby for $10. Mild, mildly cheaper at $8.90. It puts a common, old, garden variety cheese toastie in the flash food bracket. 

I saw a 1.3kg chook for $14.50 in the supermarket. A not totally like-for-like product was on special for $4.89 in 1984. Forty years ago I could have got three chooks for the price of one! 

Some greens with that disgustingly cheap chook? The ‘84 catalogue advertises a kilo of Watties frozen green peas for $1.69, on special from $1.79. The very same product online today will cost $6. Somehow, in 40 years, frozen peas have gone up more than 250 per cent. 

Spuds with your chicken and peas? A “freshly dug” 5kg bag of new Pukekohe potatoes cost just $1.99 in 1984. Today I could buy 1kg less, a 4kg bag of white washed potatoes, for $8.99, more than four times the ‘84 price. And less of them 

You scream, ice cream 

Ice cream hasn’t lost any of its appeal in 40 years, except for the price. In 1984, 2 litres of vanilla ice cream was on special for $2.05, down from $2.25. The small saving is immaterial, the total cost isn’t. Because the full price of that product online today is $8.30, three times the ‘84 price. Hasn’t affected consumption though. We each eat 22-23 litres a year; we’re the biggest ice cream eaters in the world. 

Tin foil – in ‘84 was 4.5 metres at 59c, now $4.19. Baked Beans – then two 300g cans for 99c, today one 420g can $2.80. 

But those comparisons aren’t the total picture. Food prices increased just 2.1 per cent in the 12 months to February 2024, the smallest increase since May 2021. And that has to be compared with the 12 per cent increase in the 12 months to February 2023. 

Some other ‘84 comparisons: Tea – then 250g for 99c, now $4.99 for 250g. Porterhouse/Sirloin steak – then $6.49 a kilo, now $45. Laundry detergent – then 1.5 litres for $3.69, now 2 litres $14. Chips – 200g for 85c, now 150g for $2.89. Things aren’t what they used to be.