Campbell’s No. 1 can hasn’t changed. For more than 100 years, it’s been the same thing. Same ingredients, same volume. So it’s a great benchmark. And it reveals rapid inflation. Especially since 2020.
“What makes Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup especially useful for seeing the effects of inflation is its remarkable consistency as an identifiable product over time. If you had a time machine and could travel to nearly any point in time from January 1898 to the present, you could likely find a Number 1 (10.75 oz) can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup stocked for sale in hundreds of grocery stores all across the country. That long-running consistency makes Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup an ideal product to follow to understand inflation because it’s very difficult to subject to marketing tricks like “shrinkflation“, in which producers try to hide how much more it costs consumers to buy their goods by putting less of their products into the same size packaging but continuing to charge the same price as before they monkeyed with them. “
More here: https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-price-history-of-campbells-tomato.html
This is the single best long run measure of food inflation. And it’s gone vertical. pic.twitter.com/U249l5fesy
— Balaji (@balajis) December 23, 2024