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Comment by advisedwang | Hacker News Reader

Per the link, food is up 3.1% and everything else 2.9%. So energy pulled inflation up from about 3% to about 4%, but that's not "all of the increase"

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>Per the link, food is up 3.1%

But if you look at the sibling comment, all of that came from "Food away from home ". In other words, it's all because of takeout/restaurants, not groceries. Those were actually dragging inflation down.

Energy going up drives evrything up, including food. Everything we do depends on energy in many different ways.

It's possible for energy to be behind the rises in other cost, but the data presented here gives no evidence for or against that possibility.

It obviously is part of the rises in other cost. We can argue how large a part, but I cannot imagine a world where they are unrelated

How much of the food cost (and everything else) is tied to the increase in diesel prices? Do they adjust that out?

Distributor fuel costs are a really small part of the food price, with the notable exception of things that are bulky and full of air like Cheerios. The overwhelming fuel component of grocery consumption, by a margin so large you can consider it to be 100%, is the consumer's fuel. Driving 5 miles to an American grocery store to buy a few pounds of food is the most absurd scheme ever hatched. Having your groceries delivered by a van on a route is much more efficient but, perversely, by internalizing the last mile fuel cost that would show up as higher prices for food in aggregate inflation statistics.

I meant more in general. For food, what about fertilizer which has spiked?

That's a good question. If I was looking into it, I would look at farm gate prices for various farm products, that the USDA collects. For example, prices received for grains: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Agricultural_Price...

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