Rising food prices are hitting every supermarket aisle, putting pressure on low-income families

Food prices continued to rise, with new data showing that every supermarket aisle was hit by hikes, not just fruit and vegetables.

Spiking prices have led researchers to call on the federal government to help subsidize growers, amid fears it is costing some socio-economically disadvantaged families 40% of their income to buy a week's worth of healthy foods.

Comparing the cost of 28 staple foods between June 2020 and June 2022, researchers at the Institute for Health Transformation from Deakin University found that the price of lettuce and broccoli saw the biggest increase, increasing by more than 100% in two years.

In 2020, a head of lettuce would have cost $2.50, but it now costs more than $5, and broccoli has gone from $5.90 to 11, $90 per kilogram.

Tomatoes had the third highest jump from $6.90 to $9.90 per kilogram in two years, but it didn't It wasn't just fruits and vegetables, with Christina Zorbas, a researcher at Deakin University, calling this increase a "crisis".

"Dairy products, yogurt and cheese, meat - chicken and minced meat, bread, pasta and rice... increased by 5% to 10%,” she said.

Zorbas said each aisle is affected by strong price increases, with the exception of junk food.The price of some pasta such as spaghetti has increased milk 13%, potatoes 12% and milk 9%. Research has shown that a liter of olive oil went from $12 to $16.

“The Consumer Price Index released last quarter shows fruits and vegetables are up 7% across the board, everything else is up 4%," Zorbas said.

"You see the disparity between healthy and less healthy foods, take-out increased by 1%."

Some vegetables bucked the trend: the price of carrot, onion and sweet corn remained stable.

Some fruits declined such as oranges, which went from $3.50 to $3.22 per kilogram in two years, and apples which went from $5.50 to $4.50.

Recent floods in New South Wales and Queensland, associated with increased Fuel costs due to the war in Ukraine have made almost everything more expensive at the moment.

Zorbas said rising prices have "exacerbated health inequality" and called on the government to subsidize producers until the crisis is over.

"We we need subsidies for farmers who produce healthy food,” she said.

"The sugar industry is heavily subsidized, farmers need money so I'm not against it, but that's the way the fossil fuel industry is heavily subsidized.

"Why don't can we not give more money to the farmers who make food so important to health and well-being?"

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Before the pandemic, buying food for healthy eating cost 25% of disposable income for low-income households and 30% for those living at the poverty line, Zorbas said.

"In rural or remote areas it's higher than that," she said. "In some rural indigenous communities, this represents 40% to 50% of their income.

"Now it has increased - it was already not accessible, it is not made it worse."

Kristin O'Connell, a spokeswoman for the Anti-Poverty Center, said they are seeing an increase in the number of people living below the poverty line who skipped meals.

"It's very simple," O'Connell said. a few months from now, people with the lowest incomes are eating less and less.

"It's not just about managing our extremely limited incomes reducing the amount we we eat, but we also lose t our options. Because so many of the cheapest products are disappearing from the shelves again, as they did during the shutdowns.