There have been reports that food prices are about to rise by 5%.

This has been reported as that the cost of a person's weekly shop will rise by 5%.

Yet does that follow?

It seems to me quite possible that many people will try to reduce the effect.

For example, by not getting some luxuries and choosing supermarket own label products rather than branded products.

What effect will that have?

For example, what if most of the people who might now buy a bunch of flowers when thet get their shopping decide that due to the increasing cost of food that they will not buy the flowers?

Will it last?

A filling station owner where I used to get petrol back in the 1980s told me, a while after a time when petrol prices went up dramatically, that at first lots of people bought less petrol, just what was needed to get to work, cutting out going on leisure trips at the weekend, but that after a month or so, they had missed going out so went back to buying as much petrol as before.

One thing that has emerged is that the rising cost of gas and electricity, so often expressed as how it affects a person's gas and electricity bill, will also affect businesses, not only in production but also in heating supermarkets and in powering in-store refrigerators.

William