When Was the Most Expensive Time to Buy Groceries?

Even though grocery prices in the United States have increased sharply since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Americans still spend far less of their paychecks on food than earlier generations. In 1901, the average U.S. family spent more than 40 percent of its household budget on food. In 2021, Americans spent 10 percent of their disposable income on food, due in part to higher wages and the lower relative cost of processed foods. 

While it always hurts to pay more for less at the grocery store, Americans can be grateful that they don't live in 1920 or 1973, when wartime shortages and runaway inflation made everyday foods wildly more expensive.  

Today, eggs are a refrigerator staple and an affordable source of protein, but that wasn’t the case a century ago. Unless you lived on a farm and raised your own chickens, eggs were a pricey delicacy. Eggs became more affordable in the mid-20th century when farmers moved egg production indoors and used artificial light to extend the laying season.  

“Not only were eggs more expensive in real dollars in the past, but people would have spent a larger share of their income on food, because they earned less,” says Carola Binder, an economic historian at the University of Texas at Austin.  

The most expensive year for eggs was 1920, which was not coincidentally the single worst year for inflation in U.S. history. From June 1919 to June 1920, consumer prices rose 23.7 percent, the largest 12-month increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on record. The root cause of post-World War I inflation was the diversion of resources from the civilian economy to the military, causing shortages that drove up all prices, including food.  

Before the widespread use of artificial lighting in poultry farms, egg prices fluctuated throughout the year. Eggs were cheapest in the spring, when chickens laid the most, and most expensive in the winter, when the egg supply was lower. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest recorded price for eggs in Chicago was in December 1920, when grocery shoppers paid 87 cents a dozen, equivalent to about $15.11 a dozen in 2026 dollars.

To put that price into context, the most expensive eggs in modern times cost $6.32 a dozen in March 2025 amid an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). In September 2026, the average price of eggs was back down to $2.27 a dozen, more than six times cheaper than in 1920.  

Eggs weren’t the only grocery item that got much more expensive in the wake of World War I. In 1916, before the U.S. entered the Great War, milk cost an average of 36 cents a gallon, which was already pricey. But by 1920, wartime inflation had doubled the average price to 72 cents a gallon, the equivalent of $12.57 in 2026 dollars.  

Another era when milk prices soared was during the inflationary spikes of the early 1970s. Since milk needs to be transported from farm to store, milk prices were directly affected by rising energy costs during the 1973-74 oil embargoes. To make matters worse, there was an unexpected milk shortage at the same time, further driving up prices.  

As a result, in 1973, the average price of milk in New York City was 35 cents a quart, or $1.40 a gallon, equivalent to $10.44 a gallon in 2026 dollars. By comparison, a gallon of conventional whole milk cost an average of $3.88 in October 2026, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The 1970s were a bad time for grocery prices for several reasons. In addition to oil shocks and the energy crisis, factors like weather and geopolitics also came into play. In 1972, for example, the U.S. government made a deal with the Soviet Union that would drive up the price of white bread by roughly 50 percent.

It started when Soviet grain farmers in Russia and Ukraine lost much of their wheat crops to heavy winter frost followed by an extremely hot and dry summer. To make up for the shortfall, Soviet representatives negotiated grain purchases with American exporters in 1972. The Soviets struck a deal to buy 10 million tons of American grain at a generous price subsidized by the U.S. government.  

Only later did U.S. officials realize that there was a global wheat shortage in 1972, not just in Russia and Ukraine. Since U.S. farmers had committed much of their grain reserves to the Soviets, the global grain crunch caused food prices to spike. The controversial U.S.-Soviet grain sale became known as “The Great Grain Robbery.”  

American shoppers felt the pinch in the bread aisle. In 1970, before the U.S.-Soviet grain deal, Americans paid an average of 24 cents for a pound of white bread. By 1975, the same amount of bread cost 36 cents, a 50 percent price increase. At 1.25 pounds per loaf, that works out to 45 cents for a loaf in 1975, equivalent to $2.91 in 2026 dollars.

For comparison, a 1-pound loaf of white bread cost an average of $1.83 in September 2026. In March 2019, the average price was $1.26 per pound.

In 2026, American shoppers experienced sticker shock in the meat department, where ground beef sold for an average of $6.79 a pound, nearly twice as much as it cost in 2020. The high beef prices were driven in part by prolonged droughts that devastated U.S. cattle herds. As expensive as that is, it’s not the highest price Americans have ever paid for hamburger. 

After World War II, the U.S. economy experienced steep inflation triggered by the end of wartime price controls and the return of millions of GIs eager to start families and buy things. From March 1946 to March 1947 alone, consumer prices ballooned by 20.1 percent.  

Postwar inflation was just starting to cool off when the U.S. entered the Korean War in June 1950. In 1951, food prices surged again, prompting the government to impose price controls like it had done during World War II. But even with price controls, some grocery items, including beef, remained unaffordable for many consumers.

"During the Korean War, the price controls were a lot less popular, because people didn't all universally support the war effort,” says Binder, author of Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy. “When beef prices rose, consumers got really upset, and it made the whole price control system lose a lot of public support.” 

In March 1951, the average price of ground beef reached 67 cents per pound, the equivalent of $8.75 in 2026 dollars. Other usually affordable cuts of beef were even more expensive. Round steak, a lean, tough cut that sold for $9.84 per pound in September 2026, peaked at the equivalent of $14.24 per pound in January 1952.  

In 2026, Americans eat more than 100 pounds of chicken per person each year. One reason is that chicken is usually the most affordable animal protein at the grocery store. In 2026, for example, a whole broiler chicken cost an average of $2.06 per pound, making chicken three times cheaper than ground beef.  

But chicken wasn’t always the cheapest meat. Before factory farming and modern selective breeding, chicken meat was a relatively expensive food. In the early 1900s, young chickens sold for 50 cents a pound, equivalent to roughly $20 to $30 per pound in 2026 dollars.  

At the time, farmers primarily raised chickens for eggs and only slaughtered them for meat when the bird’s laying days were over. Older chickens tend to be tough and gamey, and it wasn’t until the 1920s that farmers started raising young, tender chickens—known as "broilers"—specifically for meat. The broiler chicken market took off in the 1950s, when Americans ate around 20 pounds of chicken per person annually.

In the modern broiler era, the most expensive time to buy chicken was 1950, when food prices were still high in the aftermath of World War II. At the time, a whole fresh chicken sold for 60 cents a pound, equivalent to $8.60 a pound in 2026 dollars. That 1950 chicken was more than four times as expensive as the same bird in 2026.