Why Are Grocery Store Prices So High

If you know your party's extension, you may dial it now. To speak to someone in customer service, press 12, bakery, 13, deli or hot foods, 14, meat or seafood, 15. From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kichro-F. This is the daily. It was worth a deal over here. For a while now, my colleague, daily producer Jessica Chung, has been reporting on or trying to report on grocery prices. Had a moment right now to talk about the kind of nature of shopping right now and why everything is so expensive. That you would have to contact or corporate office for any information like that. It started after COVID, when inflation and supply shortages and prices soaring, then came Ukraine, tariffs, and now the state of Hormuz, which is push prices even higher. You can see her, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number, which be a number. No, I love it. The number just looks right in the triangle. You know what, I really love that. I love the inflation number. So she's been calling stores to talk about that. Trying to find a grocery store manager who could talk about how they and the people who shop in their store are dealing with round after round of rising food prices and how high those prices could possibly go. And who would you recommend that I talk to at the corporate level? Brad, talk to Brad. I was told that this is a number for Brad. He's been in meeting in the moment. I could take a message that he would get that out. He could call you back. Okay, but a lot of the grocery stores she'd reached out to never got back to her and the big grocery chains refer to people far removed from the shelves. And it seemed like their job was to not answer her questions. I would love to, but unfortunately I'm not allowed to. I'm not really allowed to say anything. You should be able to just email media at hopesuits.com. You can always call 1-800-Crovers. Your call is being transferred. But then, she reached a small store and this one manager picked up the phone. Wonderv if you'd be open to a conversation about that. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I would love to. Today, we go to his grocery store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to finally get some answers. It's Monday, July 13th. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a part of town called Easton sits the aptly named Easton Food Co-op. It's tucked away in a street without a lot of foot traffic. The storefront is lined with grocery carts. There's a display of leafy pot at herbs and organic seethos watermelon going $3.99. Like most food cooperatives, there is no CEO, there are no shareholders. It's owned by the very people of his shop there. 17,000 members. Though anyone off the street can buy their groceries here. No, we're not getting that. We're not getting that. On a Monday morning in the middle of June, I walked into the produce section. I'm talking to shoppers about grocery prices. Okay, go ahead. It was not hard to get people to talk about prices and how high they are. You notice grocery prices go up? Almost definitely. Today's dream. Oh, indeed. It's meteoric in a way. That's too far. It's so kind of, say, walking into the store sometimes. I've heard from everybody in my family that they're going up. I know I bring Seth home. It's like, this is outrageous. It's not just at this co-op. It's everywhere. Prices are storing at unusually high rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 2020, grocery prices have climbed by nearly 30%. At a rate way faster than before the pandemic. This lettuce is $4. That seems like a lot. I would have expected, like, two or nine. Today, the price of watermelons is $18.99. I saw that out front. I thought that was the advertise. I thought that was like a misprid. It just was shocked. Right peppers. Red peppers. Oh, my God. They're like almost $10 this morning. Fendon for $1? Yeah. Per pound. So $1? Okay, we're weighing it on the scale. It's almost a pound. So this is almost $10. For $1, red pepper. Just a few weeks ago, it was like seven or eight. And over the winters, six. And it just keeps going up. Is there a one item where you've seen prices go up in your jaw just drop? Yes, steak. Steak, beef, beef. It used to be like, you can get two nice steaks for about $20, $25. It's like $45. And is that the choice? New York strip, T-bones, all kinds of steak. So I've been seeing the family size bag. I think it's like seven or eight bucks now. It's not a family size. Not at all. It's shrunk and the price has gone up. I don't like to think about it because it's scary. Yeah. So I don't think about it. I don't think that much attention, but I'm trying to buy less. Yeah. And then I don't really do a good job of calculating how much I'm spending. Now, is that like a psychological defense mechanism? Right, right. Or is that a little bit, a little bit? I take this shopping so I don't, this is my worried pepper. Oh, this is kind of a stress ball, the form of a green pepper. It is. Have you noticed the rise in prices change your habits at all? So that less cheese, so that less meat, so that less chocolate. Designer ice cream, that's long gone. What's the designer ice cream you like? Oh, well, the hagan does that kind of stuff. Like the bramble very crispy. I don't see ice cream. That's right. We don't need it. Let's see what we can do. Oh, no more baskets. No more baskets. What's your understanding of why this is happening? My understanding of why is that. Okay, this is such a big question that my mind is sort of shutting down in this moment. You should make us pay more. I don't know why stuff is so expensive. That doesn't make any sense to me. I haven't done the research, I guess, on the details of the why. You know, I don't know exactly how, but I just know it is. I don't super follow them, I can't really say why it's happening. When you see all these prices go up, does it raise any questions for you? Yeah, I always think like, what is this going to look like in five years, ten years? How this will affect our children? As shoppers, we know that a lot of factors go into the prices we see. But how many of us can name them? Hey, hi. Yeah, just nice to meet you. How's it going? Good, yeah, so far so good. You know, Monday morning. That's what I came here to talk to Tyler Cole about. For nearly 12 years, he's been at Easton Food Co-op, most recently as General Manager. And he's that one guy who picked up the phone. Climb a chain. Tyler's 44 years old. And like a lot of people in this part of town, he's got tattoos and as a food lover. In fact, he's got a newsletter, garlic and roses. All of those factors and then. He says yes, rising prices are driven by a bunch of factors. It's rising temperatures, it's supply chain issues. Because of the stuff in Iran, oil and fertilizer being trapped in the street. But the latest reason for why prices have accelerated so much is the war in Iran. At the time we talked, the US and Iran had reached an agreement to reopen the straight of her moves. But it was unclear what opened meant, how freely traffic would flow through the street. Since then, the US and Iran have resumed fighting, even as they engage in peace talks. So the price of oil continues to yo-yo up and down. And even if the price of oil manages to stay down, Tyler says shoppers won't be feeling a sense of relief anytime soon. But before I had to explain all that. Maybe starting from an earlier age, like how did you know you wanted to go into the grocery store business? I asked him how he became an expert on this. My grandparents owned a basket of robins. I can remember waiting on customers, scooping ice cream, making change. He grew up just a few hours east of here, as a literal kid in an ice cream store. I would have to like put my whole body on the rim of the case so I could balance the scoop ice cream. And I loved it. It was so much fun. He liked talking to customers, studying what flavors people liked and what seasons. And then he grew to develop an interest in a pretty esoteric topic, supply chains. Like I'm fascinated by the food supply chain and logistics of getting a strawberries from Mexico or California to Pennsylvania in January or your February. It's tedious and unique, but I found it fascinating, so I paid attention. To be a grocery store manager, managing the margins of thousands of products on the shelves, is to be a statistician, a haggler, and also a culture anthropologist. People are more inclined to buy an item if there's three or five displayed in a line. And other grocery store managers, Tyler's job is to drive sales. To do that, he's a hand in designing the whole experience the shoppers have, down to all the little details. There's lots of studies and everything, always say, if you get berries and people's baskets, they buy more of other things as well. Interesting. Okay, so now I wonder if you might be able to take me around the store and give me a little tour. Okay, cool. Okay, how are you Nicholas? Good to see you. I'm doing great. Thanks. Good to see you. Yeah, thank you. There are ways East End feels different than most other grocery stores. Like the way it hits you when you first walk in. I love the bulk herb section because I feel like it gives every co-op a unique smell. This smell is so nice. I feel like the dominant smell right now is like turmeric maybe? Yeah, depending on where we go, we walk into Whole Foods. It smells like their seafood department. Yes. That dominates everything. In addition to bulk herbs, or bulk nuts, greens, and oats. There's kombucha on tap. - The yeast-done cultures is a local kombuturi. - There's Dr. Bronner's soap, available in a buffet of these big pump bottles. - Oh, it's on draft. - Yep, these are freshly ground peanut butter and almond butter, coffee, olive oil. We have, that's bulk sugar. We get these in 50 pound bags. And yeah, you got all your normal grocery store items, pasta. You want box macarons, geez, we have it. It's just that it's gonna meet our product standards and not have dyes or other chemical additives, that aren't up to co-op snuff. (gentle piano music) - So shopping at the co-op is a bit different than other places nearby. Teltier, maybe a little hipier, but that's not to say it's yop-ier. You may have to pay a little bit more for the quality stuff, but I met all kinds of people shopping here. A home health aid, a barber, a couple of people on snap benefits. But it turns out it's maybe the most ideal place to look at rising food prices. Because unlike bigger chains like Croger, which admitted to raising prices on certain items beyond the rate and inflation in 2024, the co-op model, which is owned by the very people who shop there, means they are more motivated to keep prices low than they are to turn a profit. And without the scale or storage capacity, but big box store, they can't negotiate buying at higher volumes. So the prices at the co-op can actually be the most transparent prices, and they give us a good look into how the war in Iran caused prices to surge. Last week there was an inflation report that showed that inflation was up by like 4.2%. You got an email. Oh yeah, you remember. Teltier brings his laptop over. And on the sales floor, next to the prepared food section, he shows me an email forecasting price increases for July. This was the national co-op warning that there is a higher number of costs and price suggestion changes than normal in a month. Because the US had released its latest inflation report showing the highest rate of inflation in three years. Grocery prices aren't rising quite as fast, up 2.7% over the past year. But the message from on high is that Tyler would be forced to raise prices around the store yet again. So essentially, national sends you this spreadsheet with hundreds of items with their skews, and they say, we're going to have to raise a price on this. And you have discretion over whether-- whether we do it or not. We don't do that because that item needs to stay low to attract customers. Yes, exactly. And in July, where are the biggest markups? This apricot has been a huge one. The bulk dried apricots is going up-- Yeah, over 140-- over six months. That is this average change. Wow, the average change for your bulk apricots. 146%. Sour pickles, up 83%. Sliced peaches, up 97%. Mustard, 73%. Matcha, 73%. Bagels in English muffins, 10%. That's high. It translates to 41 cents per unit. I mean, that's-- people will notice that. Tofu's up 122%. Yes, soybeans, because that's been a big thing. With fertilizer, and most of them come from China. So all the tofu stuff is going to be getting very high and getting higher. Anything over 20% to me is high in a six-month period. Overall, these percent increases are attributable to-- Yes, all the inflationary farms. Yeah, yeah. To world events. So prices around the store are going up fast. Well, I wonder if you can-- OK, we can continue walking through this store. And in particular, if you can walk me through certain items where the price has gone up because of the war in Iran-- Yeah, yeah. So where would that be in the store? So we got in this section. I asked Tyler to walk me through the store and show me how specific items have been impacted by the war in Iran. We have canola, safflower, sunflower, all of these types of oils. And explain to me the journey it took to get here. And how it arrived at that sticker price. Here's your standard field-day vegetable oil field days are everyday low price brand. Those one up 5% in the same month cost more to transport. It's coming from farther distances. And also, we feel pricey. Some of the olive oils like equal exchange-- these are all from the West Bank. And so you factor in that conflict. And then also the transportation. If you'll cost getting here-- And will it continue to go? Yes, absolutely. Glass is heavier. So that costs more to transport. It's like beer companies. Everybody went to aluminum cans instead of glass bottles because of the weight on the truck. There's a value to keeping it in glass. It's a better product experience than plastic. But at a certain point, they might have to make that decision. Because it's so much heavier to transport, they might have to make decisions. Your glass, olive oil, is the most expensive items on the shelf. Oh, yeah. At like $6,99, $23,99. But the ones in aluminum, $15,99. One glass jar could travel-- crisscross the country like four times. In theory, olive oil could be produced in the West Bank, then bottled in California, traveled by freight to be warehouse in Illinois, before it's driven down Pennsylvania Turnpike to this grocery store. All of that brings up a ton of fuel. And then over here to the canned beans are the prices for beans going up, or anything with aluminum. Aluminum, I think, is going to be the next one. And then there's the cost of raw materials that go into packaging. Like soda, anything that's packaged in an aluminum can, that's going to be the next thing. I think that sees a big price increase in-- And why aluminum? Last year, after Trump imposed a 50% tariff on aluminum imports, American buyers started sourcing more aluminum from the Middle East, only to find that after the US attacked Iran, their new aluminum supply was stuck. Because shipping through the strait became impossible. Some smelters in the Middle East, factories where aluminum was made, stop production altogether. Others, like when an Abu Dhabi, were directly damaged by Iranian strikes. But even as the US and Iran continue with peace talks, it will take a long time before supplies back to normal. The site in Abu Dhabi will have to be restored. And for the companies that stop production, a frozen line could take months to restart, which means when the cost of aluminum drives up the cost of your olive oil in the coming months, it will stay that way for a while. So where are we headed now? But Tyler says there's really one item that reflects the forces leading to higher prices, better than any other. We're going to head over to our meat section, behind the beef. Beef prices have gone up tremendously. It takes the most resources to have cows fed, basically. More so than chicken or seafood, anything like that. So beef is usually the first place we see a dramatic increase of-- 80/20 grass fed beef, $9.99 for a 1 pound package. Of ground beef. Of ground beef. When we introduced that brand, it was always $6.99. And then in the last year-- So not necessarily strictly because of Iran, but all the fuel costs going up. It's gone up $3 a pound just in the last year. So when you've got land in somewhere in the United States and you're raising a herd of cattle, it takes so much feed. And industrial agriculture, a lot of that is coming from China. And so not only is it traveling a tremendous distance, and there's all the associated fuel costs, but it's also getting stuck in the straight of hormones. China, India, huge producers of feed and fertilizer, and they all go through that straight, same with oil. And then you have to then ship your cows. They go to a meat processing plant, which it's all on trucks, transporting it, and then the packaging. So at every point, you're seeing an increase in cost. And all that meat has to go into plastic, which takes fuel to make and ship. Exactly. And then it all has to be cold, refrigerated or frozen, the entire time. If it loses the cold chain, it's waste. It's garbage. And there is yet another thing driving up costs. Dairy farmers are going dry all across America. Down on their luck, struggling with their own price increases of running a farm. The share of farmers declaring bankruptcy has risen by 70% so far this year. The next generation for a lot of these farmers, they don't want to do it. They see how hard it is to get it in Weston, Pennsylvania. Tyler's own beef suppliers have quit the business, meaning he now has the sources beef from further away, which could make his beef even more expensive. It's a problem for Tyler and his customers, but it's also a problem for the Trump White House, which is doing whatever it can to lower prices. Before the Fourth of July weekend, a USDA official pressured leading chain stores like Croger and Walmart to lower the price of ground beef. Walmart dropped his price by 12%. But this is just a temporary fix in the face of declining supply, rising costs, and unflagging demand for beef. This is our most shop-lifted case in the whole store. You're kidding me. Stakes and beef. Yep, we had to add a security guard in the morning. We only have one afternoon through closing time. We had to add one in the morning because it was getting shop-lifted multiple times a morning. Wow. Wow. I chased a guy down the street, which we don't do. But I was like, this is-- you are taking from our community. And it felt so blatant at that point. He literally had a duffel bag. Oh, my. And I saw him standing here, just throwing beef and ground beef and steaks and even chickens into this duffel bag. And I tried to get him to drop it. and he just bolted for the door and I was like, I'm going after this. Like I can't step forward. - And what happened? - Well I got like a block down the road and then I was like, this is stupid. Like I don't wanna get stabbed for me. - Yeah, yeah. So we got away. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But this is like a jewelry heist. - Yeah, that's the beef case. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Exactly. - Wow. - Tyler says it might be a while before beef prices stabilize, just like everything else. Economist have a name for it. Rockets and feathers. Prices go up like rockets, but come down slowly like a feather. Because even if the straight reopens and even if oil prices come down, disruption in the supply chain takes time to readjust. And if a new normal is accepted and there's no competition, manufacturers tend to keep the prices artificially high. And then if your grocery store buys in large quantities with prices locked in up to a year, they're stuck at that price, or the year. - And I'll be curious as we go to another store, I don't know what's in that ground beef, but I'm also curious to see how much across at this point, even for like the lower quality, conventional chemical beef products. - How much they're going for? - Exactly, yeah. - Four new grocery stores have opened within four mile radius of us. The price increases is driving more people to the discount grocer. So we have in all these less than a mile from here. They at first didn't really have much of an impact on us, but now that the food inflation has reared up again in a noticeable way, we are seeing more and more people choosing lower quality product at a discount grocer for more of their basket. - Tyler says he's already watched more of his customer shop at allty. And this is part of a bigger trend he reads in all the industry reports. A few years ago, even as prices were rising, customers would do their shopping at multiple stores, hitting each for their best deals and products. But now they're more likely to do almost all their shopping at one place, at a discount supermarket, and not places like East End. - And you can't survive the customers are just coming in for one or two products. - Yeah, like long term no. - Well, why would I have all this stuff? - If shoppers start to see East End as a place to go to for just a few items, and not the bulk of their groceries, it's not sure how it continues to survive. - Now I understand that part of your job is also scoping out the prices of your competitors like allty. Would you bring me onto one of those? - Yeah, I'd love to. - That'd be really fun. - One of those trips, yeah. - Yeah, it would be my pleasure. - Okay, now how discreet do we have to be? - They may have like media policy. - Okay, well then maybe I will switch into different recording gear. - Okay, yeah. - That's just like a little bit more discreet. - Sure. - But maybe when you take a break, I would like to leave you down below. After the break, Tyler and Jess scope out the competition. We'll be right back. - Put this in your back pocket, and just clip this until your shirt. - Later on the afternoon, Tyler and I wired up and walked eight minutes down a high traffic street. Next to a vacated ride aid, it's the Aldi. - Well this Aldi looks really spankin' new. - Tyler routinely scopes his place out since it opened a year and a half ago. - All right, let's go. - Cool, let's do it. - I hate seeing messy store. - Put $1.49. - $1.49 for blackberries. - That's not a bad price. - No, it's a great price. - For Georgian grown blackberries. - And honestly they're probably very good. - Can you get a nice little moldy? - Oh yeah, that's a moldy peach. - Inside the bag. - Maybe they're fantastic peaches, but all these doesn't have employees who would be culling this and keeping it nice. Whereas we have staff who, part of their job in the produce department is to get rid of stuff like that because nobody wants to see that. That's their whole model is like no labor. They just drop pallets on the floor. The bananas, they don't even take out of the box. - This is a very different shopping experience than at Tyler's store. It's much bigger. The aisles are wider. No frills. As a shopper, you'd be hard pressed to find someone to help you locate the parsley. The few workers we did see were clearing the sales floor of empty boxes or products were shipped in and no workers were needed to wrangle carts. You rent a grocery cart for a quarter and get that quarter back when you return it. No loose carts, no extra workers. All day, tommene a statement that all of this is meant to drive down costs and lower prices. A strategy that seems to be working. All day is the fastest growing grocery store chain in the country with 180 new stores underway. This watermelon, what is, I can't even see it 'cause there's so much over the price. - It's a 465 maybe and it's a good look at watermelon. Honestly, it's got a nice sunspot. I bet it's tasty. - And yours is going for $19 per watermelon out front. - Probably the local organic ones. - Yeah, yeah. - This is the biggest business. - Everything's the boxes. - Yep, and everything's the plaster. - I mean, there's a broken egg inside the fridge. - Yeah, that's bad. - That's just yoke. - That's hollow, or? - Or ranchy. - The crown. - But I mean, for $146 a dozen, $46 a dozen. That is-- - Hard to beat. - I've never seen anything that long. - Yeah, so they're buying a ton in volume for as many stores as they could get the product into to get that deal. Like you may never see the same bag of chips twice. See what's over here and look at their beef. - Yeah beef. - So we talked about that before. - Yeah. - Let's see how low they can go. - When we arrive at the beef case, we see a wide selection. Some even going for $4.79 a pound. - Yeah, that looks busted. - This is the kind of beef Tyler didn't seem threatened by. Until-- - I'm curious what they-- - We both looked up at the top shelf. - 100% grass fed. - And he reached overhead for a package, a pound of organic ground beef, going for $7.29. - Organic grass fed. - Yeah, this is organic. - I mean, that's tough. - I guess how do you feel seeing that? - I mean, it's disappointing. I mean, I'm glad that they're offering organic option, grass fed to their folks. There are other considerations with, especially with me, like humanely raised that this doesn't talk about. Our standards include humanely raised grass fed, grass finished also because, I mean, in theory, you could give this cow one blade of grass and say it was grass fed, it doesn't say. That's the only thing it ever ate, it's whole life. So that's a consideration. - What are you feeling when you see that they're able to opt for? You know, we don't really know how comparable, but to a consumer, pretty comparable product for-- - Right, for a little thing. - $2.70 less. - A lot of people buy ground beef. It's a staple for a lot of meat eating customers, and it's a very price sensitive category. It's very much one that people are attuned to. - Like eggs and milk. - Yep, exactly. - This is artisan, we just gotta stay on top of it all. You can't slouch. - That's what this says to me. Like, we've lost. - I'm a little surprised at the volume of the organic beef. Like, is it that, and steaks that? That's a little bit of a new thing for me. - Yeah, there's like a whole shelf. - The next of the lines. - That's like maybe one tenth of the selection. - A beef is organic. - Yeah. - The thing that makes you think you might want to lower your beef prices and then mark up something else in that store and what would that be? - Yeah, possibly that could be a solution, or whatever my advertised deals items are that week, added dime to that for each product instead of the biggest discount possible or retained. - Fickering out how to compete with all these 729 grass fed organic ground beef requires a little math. Tyler could raise the price on his lamb, but he doesn't sell enough lamb to make up for what he's losing in beef. So he could raise the price of a couple of other items around the store. Or normally he wouldn't have enough storage to buy ground beef at a high volume and its lowest price, but he could bet that with a promotional price. He could sell beef fast enough that he wouldn't have to worry about storing it for long. - We're not gonna drive all these out of the organic ground beef market. - What you have to try is the thing is like, you use all the tools in your toolkit and regain a little bit of that ground. - Right, anything else in here? Or I think we're good? - And with that key bit of intel, our conison strip was complete. - The exit may do it. - Oh yeah. - They forced you to go through the cash register. - Oh yeah. - You gotta break out of this all these. - After a visit to Aldi, Tyler is figuring out a way to lower the price of his ground beef. By raising the price of his frozen beef and negotiating a lower rate with his beef supplier, he's hoping to offer his ground beef at $8.99, a dollar lower than what he'd been charging. It's not the $7.29 at Aldi, but Tyler says it's close enough to compete and low enough to put on flyers as a promotion item to customers. But that's just one item in a store of thousands. Right now, he's putting in pre-orders for turkeys that would lock him in at current high inflationary prices, not knowing what he can sell them for come November. It's a high wire act balancing these prices, with the hope that it all adds up. And then I think about the customers at both East and at Aldi, who asked me, "If the cost of groceries will ever go down, what will happen in five or 10 years, and what would it mean for their children?" Tyler can't stay for certain, but he says cost going up is just how it always goes. Even if we see inflation numbers go down, it doesn't translate to normal food prices. It just means prices rise slower. And if one of the fallouts of the war in Iran is that a new fee will be imposed on every ship passing through the strait. He says those costs will continue to be passed on to customers, who have long gotten the message, but they will just have to adapt. [MUSIC] >> Do you blame anyone? Like do you want someone to do something about this? >> It's not going to be done about that. You got to bite the bull of it in a way. This got to find a way to come up with the money, you know? >> I'm sure it's like 50,000 reasons and excuses why we're slammed with this. >> What are you supposed to do pricey? It goes up. It's just the way life is here. And you mean you have to be able to adapt to it. >> A lot of moms adapt. We're resilient. >> We got adapt. >> You know what? >> Yeah, we got adapt. [MUSIC] >> Are you finding that you have to make certain sacrifices to make ends meet? >> Cut back what I packed my lunch now for four months, I eat watermelon every day for lunch. >> For four months, you ate watermelon for lunch? >> I still do every day, yeah. >> Is that enough? >> Yeah, watermelon was an apple. >> Yeah, and my water, yeah, you get adjusted to it. >> And how much watermelon are we talking for lunch? >> Four or five nice pieces, I put in the containers about that bag and I put that in there. And then I have an apple and I have a water water. >> The food that I can eat is very limited. I can't just get peanut butter. I have to get like sunflower seed butter, which is extremely expensive. So sometimes I just won't eat. You just won't eat. >> Yeah, I feel like I've lost a lot of weight. >> How long has it been going for that you feel like you have to skimp? >> It's been quite a while. [MUSIC] >> I have kids that are cheerleader, just I have, we've got play sports. >> Yeah, practice, so they were hungrier than usual. And my kids often are like, can I have some more? I'm just like, sure. >> And that's your portion sometimes. But then I'll survive off of something small. >> Like what? >> Like I'll go eat ramen noodles or something. I'll make them dinner and I'll go eat their chicken nuggets or something. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> You can't eat like I used to, you have to like space it out a lot. You don't run out of food. >> You mean eat less? >> Yeah. >> Oh wow. >> Yeah, eat less and budget more. >> That seems like a real sacrifice and real change. >> It is. >> Sometimes try to eat once a day or just twice. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And that too much portions. >> Just eat just enough. >> Eat to not be entirely full, but just eat just enough for your body to be okay. >> Have you ever had to do this in your life? >> No. >> No. >> Always ate over eight. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You try to make like pastas, chickpea and rice kind of thing. Like, you know, jackfruit burgers. >> Yeah. >> We try. >> What's your guys' relationship to each other? >> For what? >> Oh. >> You have to do the teenage boy. >> Two teenage boys. >> Well, unfortunately. >> They do a lot. >> Yeah. >> They eat more than often. >> And that's why we have to sacrifice or, you know, needing as much because they need nutrition. >> I see. >> I see. >> Like, worried of, you know, not being a provide for my family or that we are going to be okay for today. [MUSIC] A number of grocery store chains, including Walmart, Target and Costco, recently announced that they're cutting prices on some of their key products. But even with those deals, Americans' grocery bills are unlikely to fall. According to the Department of Agriculture, prices across all food categories are expected to rise 3.2% this year. We'll be right back. [MUSIC] Here's what else you need to know today. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who epitomized his party's transformation from outright hostility toward Donald Trump to flattering embrace of him has died at the age of 71. >> He's a race-batty, xenophobic, religious, big. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. >> In 2015, as a Republican candidate for president, Graham led the charge against Trump, calling him a "cook, crazy, and unfit for office." But once Trump won the presidency, Graham suddenly became his eager ally. Our colleague, Mark Liebovich, pushed Graham to explain that abrupt pivot in an episode of the Daily back in 2019. >> You seem a little sick and tired of what's happened to Lindsey Graham question. >> Yeah, but it's just like, yeah, like okay. Nothing, from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it'd be odd for me not to do this. >> Now, what is this? The work with him or try to be real? >> Try to be real. >> Graham told Liebovich that his partnership with Trump was pragmatic and allowed him to achieve his own political goals, which over time included defending Ukraine against Russia. Graham's office said that he died from a brief illness shortly after returning from his latest trip to Ukraine. And attacks between Iran and the US continued to escalate over the weekend, with no signs of progress to salvage the ceasefire. After the US military said that Iran had attacked another container ship in the Strait of Hormuz over night between Saturday and Sunday, US forces carried out some of their most intense strikes on Iran in weeks. US Central Command said it had hit about 140 Iranian military targets. In response, Iran attacked several US Allied Persian Gulf states, though the US military said that those strikes didn't cause significant damage. The Iranian government said it also had closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, though President Trump disputed that claim. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung with help from Michelle Bonja. It was edited by Michael Benoit with help from Page Cowat and Patricia Willins, fact checked by Will Pyshel, and contains music by Marion Luzano and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Wunderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley, special thanks to Ben Castleman, Kim Severson, Kevin Draper, and Anna Folleep. [Music] That's it for the Daily. I'm Natalie Kichroa. See you tomorrow.