Grapes close to NIS 40 per kilo?
There is such a thing (photo: Daniel Malachovsky)
The biggest concern in dealing with the cost of living is that sometimes the headlines manage to confuse us, preventing us from managing our household expenses wisely.
Here, for example, is the increase in milk prices that occupied us this week.
We will not take it easy of course, it is a serious blow to our pocket, less because of the controlled milk price and more because of the price increases in the related dairy products: the cheeses, the delicacies and more.
But the increase in milk prices is nothing more than the "opening shot" that jumpstarts the price increases of the summer - and these will hurt us much more precisely outside the milk refrigerators.
In other words: supervised milk, even if we pay more shekels for it, will perhaps amount to an excess expenditure of 20-30 shekels per month.
bananas
Among the (relatively) cheap ingredients on the fruit shelf (photo: Daniel Malachovski)
Together with the cheeses and delicacies, this will already be close to 100 and with some pasta, bread, canned vegetables and fruits, we will easily reach another 300 shekels per month, the price of the increase - and this is even before we take into account the expected increase in the price of the mortgage, in the payments of the private kindergartens for the school year Next - and these are just examples that reflect part of our mix of expenses that is expected to jump, while at the same time the loans that might have helped us survive this bad period are also becoming more expensive...
More in Walla!
The complete guide: everything you need to know before and after catheterization
Served on behalf of Shachel
Peach: record price differences between the fruits (photo: Daniel Malachovsky)
Just before the Minister of Economy promotes the proposal to include Coca-Cola's black liquid in the basket of supervised products, while we still haven't received a solution for the essential consumer products - we went to check how much the fruits of the season cost us in the marketing chains this year
Bukhara Phil Mishmish: We hardly found a kilo of apricots for less than NIS 20 per kilo (Photo: Daniel Malachovski)
We put together a basket of fruits that we all put in the shopping cart: avocado, watermelon, peach, oranges, tangerines, grapes, kiwi, pomelo, grapefruit, lemon, melon, bananas and nectarines and checked the prices in 17 marketing chains, including discount chains, urban chains, ultra-orthodox chains - Strictly kosher even in non-kosher chains.
Watermelon, the symbol of the Israeli summer (photo: Daniel Malachovsky)
The findings are amazing, no less - because while our eyes are all on the milk coolers and its products, we found a gap of 139% between the cheap and the expensive basket, which is the difference between the cheapest price we found in the market warehouses and the high price sampled in the AM PM urban chain.
In some of the fruits we even found differences of more than 300% comparing the networks.
Where is the best place to buy an avocado? (Photo: Daniel Malachovski)
And we were left not only with the data, but also with a sad question?: Israel was once the land of fruits and vegetables, we prided ourselves on the fact that unlike the pale Europeans, the swarthy children eat a banana in the winter and a bunch of grapes in the summer, an apple during lunch break at school and a watermelon by the pool at summer camp - whereas today, In many of the fruits, a kilo costs more than a kilo of ground meat or chicken breast.
The painting is nothing, the price difference - actually (photo: Daniel Malachovsky)
As usual in our places, everyone blames everyone else: the government the middlemen of the agricultural produce, the farmers the retailers, the retailers the government - and the government, the previous government.
We will not pretend to decide the issue of guilt now, but we will only point out sadly the only parameter that remains constant: the consumer, that is, we, will continue to pay dearly for what was once the prominent hallmark of our shopping basket.
139% gap between the cheapest chain and the most expensive (Photo: Daniel Malachovski)
The author is the CEO of the Retail Research Institute
based on the prices of the marketing chains through the Pricez website as of 03/05/2023
Of money
consumption
Compare prices
Tags
fruits
the increase in price
Cost of living
Compare prices
Rami Levi
Yohannoff
grapes
bananas
peach
watermelon