Perceptual Dissonance as a Measure of Inflation in Food Prices
I decided to try a brand of frozen pizza that I never tried before. As with most frozen pizzas sold these days in the supermarket, it came in an opaque box. This is what was actually inside.
Doesn't look as satisfying as the picture promised
The packaging depicts a pizza with enough chorizo to be shared among the six slices so that each got 2 pieces. What I actually got was barely one third of this amount. The chicken didn’t fare much better — less than a half. And I doubt there’s sufficient cheese to even constitute an complete layer. Count the ingredients yourself.
How little chorizo and chicken is there?
As currency depreciation injects excess liquidity into commodity prices worldwide, the resulting spike in food prices is being passed onto the consumer in two ways — direct increases in shelf prices, or reducing quantity and quality of the contents of a product sold at a given price. As the speculative bubble driven by quantitative easing drives food prices to ever new heights, we can expect the gap between the images printed on the outside of packaging and what we find inside, to continue to widen.
As for my lunch, I had to use up my own supply of cheese and sliced Italian salami which added to the total cost. That’s real the price of having a complete pizza.
