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Show Food's a bairgainu M U.S. Once in a while we need to be reminded that the sky isn t falling, dark clouds have silver linings and the sun will come out tomorrow. Inflation may be as inevitable as Sylvester Stallone movie sequels, but there still are some things that are bargains. For instance, food. Yes, food. Because we buy food every week we are sensitive to slight price increases and forget what a bargain food is. According to Georgia Lauritzen, Extension nutrition specialist special-ist at Utah State University, most of the food price statistics favor the consumer. The price of food has gone up more slowly than the rest of the consumer price index over the past several years. Also, since 1930 Americans have been spending a decreasing percentage of their incomes on food. In 1930 we spent 24 percent per-cent of our income. We now spend only about 16 percent, . Lauritzen says. She says we also do well compared with what citizens of other developed countries spend on food. The method used to compare com-pare prices of food in various countries is the number of minutes of work it takes to earn the money to buy a certain food item in each country, Lauritzen says. For example, she says it may take about five minutes of work to earn the money to buy a half gallon of milk in the United States compared with 40 minutes in the Soviet Union, 10 minutes mi-nutes in England and nine minutes in Italy. Lauritzen says there are, however, great differences in food prices within the United States. For instance, in a recent survey of 21 major cities. Salt Lake City ranked 11th in price for a typical assortment of groceries. The Salt Lake City price was $45.75 compared with the lowest price of $39.97 in San Diego and the highest price of $59.64 for the identical foods in Honolulu. |