Consumer food prices concern: overview
- Most consumers remain concerned about food prices and affordability
- UK, German and US consumers report persistent cost pressures
- Food inflation has slowed, but prices remain above past levels
- Wage growth has improved affordability for some households slightly
- Climate events and geopolitical disruptions could raise prices further
Cost-of-living has been perhaps the single biggest food and beverage story of the decade.
Consumers globally have grappled with high food prices, which initially shot up with the start of the war in Ukraine and the resulting trade disruptions back in 2022.
Reports earlier this year had suggested that they were likely to come down. But soon after this, the US and Israel attacked Iran, once again sending the world’s food supply chain into disarray.
Consumer confidence in food prices remains low. But does this reflect reality?
Consumer confidence remains low
The price of food has seen significant interest this year. According to Google Trends, global interest in ‘food prices’ was 43% higher in August 2026 than in February 2022, the month in which Russia invaded Ukraine, with interest even higher earlier this year.
Consumer confidence in Europe and the US remains low. Around 88% of UK consumers were worried about cost-of-living as of July 2026, up from 85% in July 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics’ Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN). And 56% said that their cost of living had increased within the past month, with nearly all respondents citing food as a reason.
Consumers are not confident things are changing. In the UK and Germany, roughly two-thirds of consumers do not believe that the cost-of-living crisis is getting any better, according to analytics company Mintel.
Furthermore, 59% of UK consumers believe that they have been affected by rising food and drink prices within the last two months, according to Mintel data, and 65% of German consumers believe the same thing.
Meanwhile, in the US, 59% of adults are concerned about rising prices, and 90% have changed their shopping approach in at least one category due to price rises.
Consumer concerns around affordability are shaping global food trends. In Africa, for example, affordability is the lens through which other food trends are seen. Particularly important is how much control a consumer feels they have – affordable options give consumers greater control over how much they spend.
Affordability is even affecting interest in sustainable food options. While many consumers do care about sustainability, affordability is often their priority.
Low consumer confidence means that spending is more likely to remain low, explains Thijs Geijer, sector economist for food and agriculture at ING Bank.
If consumers are not confident, they are far less likely to buy food. If food is perceived to be expensive, this will affect sales.
Yet the question remains whether, in this case, perception reflects reality.
Has food become more affordable?
Food prices have not been rising to the extent that they did in 2022 and 2023, when the war in Ukraine, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and severe weather events combined to create profound disruption, explains Chris Brockman, EMEA vice president of insights for food and drink at Mintel.
The rise of food prices nonetheless remains a concern. In fact, they have been exacerbated by the Iran conflict and more severe weather.
Food prices have been felt acutely in Europe, Brockman explains, where energy costs and reliance on imports conspire to make food more expensive.
At the same time, many of the world’s poorest countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East have been impacted by skyrocketing energy costs resulting from the war in Iran.
Yet there is some complexity to this. While prices have not gone down significantly, wages have risen slightly in some geographies, explains Sandra Ahrens, data journalist for consumer goods at data platform Statista.
“Affordability depends not only on the prices consumers pay, but also on whether household incomes and wages keep pace with them. If incomes rise faster than food prices, groceries can become relatively more affordable despite continued price increases.”
Yet such improvements in average wages can mask greater pressures on lower-income households.
Should consumers be concerned?
Consumers often overestimate the current rate of inflation once rapid price increases have eased, says Statista’s Ahrens. However, while the inflation rate may be lower, this only means prices are rising more slowly, not that they have returned to their previous levels.
The visibility of food prices can put them to the forefront of consumers’ minds. “Grocery prices are particularly visible because consumers encounter them frequently, rather than only occasionally. At the same time, price increases attract more attention than price decreases,” says Ahrens. “As a result, perceptions may overstate the pace of current food-price growth, even though concerns about the overall cost of groceries remain justified.”
Yet as much as food prices have risen already, they are likely to rise again in the future.
The impact of the recent droughts have not yet begun to work their way through to affect retail prices, says Mintel’s Brockman.
Furthermore, the impact of the current El Niño, predicted by the UK Met Office to be the largest since the 19th century, could further disrupt weather patterns, impacting the food supply chain even more and potentially once again bringing up food prices.
In short, says Brockman, “consumer concerns are justified”. Whatever the current rate of price rises is, increases in the future have the potential to be profound.
Consumer concern around food prices is still high. Reality is broadly congruent with these concerns – while the rate of price rises has slowed since the beginning of the cost-of-living crisis in 2022, food is still very expensive. And there may be far greater price rises to come.
