Households are cutting back on food shopping as the rising cost of living bites into budgets.
Nearly half of adults surveyed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said they had bought less food in the past fortnight due to higher prices.
The price of food was also the most common reason for why those asked were seeing their monthly outgoings rising overall, the ONS said.
Supermarkets Asda and Tesco have said customers are cutting back on shopping.
Asda told the BBC that some shoppers are asking cashiers to stop scanning items when the till total hits £30 as they try to cut costs and also switch to budget ranges.
Meanwhile, Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, has said it is seeing early signs that shoppers are changing their habits due to high inflation – the rate at which prices rise – such as buying less food and visiting more frequently.
The ONS said its feedback from supermarkets also suggested customers were spending less on their food shops because of the rising cost of living.
It found that sales in supermarkets dropped 1.5% in May, with a 2.2% fall in specialist shops such as butchers and bakers.
“Many customers are buying down, particularly with food, choosing value-range items where they might previously have bought premium goods,” said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium.
Retail sales overall fell by 0.5% in May, the ONS said, and it also revised its sales growth figure for April to 0.4% from its previous estimate of 1.4%.
Prices overall are continuing to rise at their fastest rate for 40 years, with UK inflation at 9.1%, the highest level since March 1982.
The RAC motoring group revealed that the average price of a litre of petrol hit £1.90 for the first time on Thursday, while diesel was edging towards £2 a litre.
Fuel and energy prices are the biggest drivers of inflation, but food costs drove the most recent rise in May, with prices for bread, cereal and meat climbing.
Sarah Coles, senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the “horror” of April’s unprecedented rise in energy bills “swallowed a much bigger slice” of households’ income and “kept their appetite for spending under control”.
“It’s not just the rising bills of today that are worrying us, it’s the prospect of even higher bills tomorrow, and fears of a looming recession, which might cause our finances to unravel entirely,” she added.
BBC
