In terms of dollars, these price changes are not enormous; this year’s bill is only $2.41 higher than last year’s. But as a percentage, this increase is abnormally large. In a typical year during the 2010s, Lusk said, food prices increased by about 1 percent. If the cost of my ingredients had increased at that rate from Thanksgiving 2019 to now, it would currently be about 2 percent higher than it was two years ago. Instead, it’s almost 13 percent higher…

A 5 percent increase to a holiday grocery bill is not on its own going to push households into financial ruin. But Thanksgiving is just one day, and paying 5 percent more for every meal at home adds up, especially for people with less money—in 2019, according to the Department of Agriculture, the lowest-income one-fifth of households spent 36 percent of their post-tax income on food, while the highest-income fifth spent only 8 percent of theirs.