Utah hit with 9% increase at stores

The price of the Deseret News' grocery basket jumped a whopping 9 percent in the past month. If you think that's rough, just wait until you get the bill for school lunch.

Parents and students in Provo and Nebo school districts will pay 25 cents more per lunch ticket. That's a 16 percent hike. Parents in the Granite School District are going to pay an extra 20 cents, or 14 percent more than last school year.

"Some products I'm purchasing have gone up 54 percent," said Jenilee McComb, the Provo District's child-nutrition supervisor. "All food has gone up, all supplies have gone up — even paper products have gone way up."

Since April, the Deseret News has been tracking the price of 15 items, including milk and eggs, a gallon of gas, and pizza and a movie. After posting a decline on July 3, prices were 9.1 percent higher Friday, resulting in a more than 6 percent increase in the past four months.

A few trends are at work. You may have noticed your cereal boxes are shrinking, but not prices. Now, it's happening to diapers.

A big box of Huggies diapers had cost us $29.99 for three months. On Friday, the cost dropped to $21.99. But this was hardly a bargain. The big box had shrunk from 144 diapers to 100.

Some quick math puts the new price at 22 cents per diaper. The old price was just under 21 cents a diaper. So this month, we calculated the cost of 144 diapers at 22 cents apiece, since we couldn't find the same product size. We're paying 5.6 percent more.

A Smith's Marketplace worker said Huggies no longer makes 144-diaper boxes.

We also saw some long-standing prices jump this month. Frozen corn went up 10 cents to $1.29, an 8.4 percent jump. Pizza Hut's large pepperoni pie jumped 50 cents to $13.99, also the first increase seen since we started tracking.

Some of the goods went down. Eggs were down 23 percent last month and overall are down 37 percent since April, when they cost $1.92 a dozen.

Some prices have been volatile. Oreo cookies are up 34 percent this month, but they're down 9.5 percent since April.

Blue jeans went up 52 percent this month, but they're still down 9 percent since April. The Levi's we're watching have been on sale at $19.99 since May, but fell to $13.19 on clearance a month ago.

A gallon of gas remains the most steady climber, up 12 cents a gallon in the past month. That's a 3 percent increase in a month, and a 29 percent increase since April, when a gallon cost a mere $3.20. It's now $4.14 at the Maverik station we're tracking.

Gas is part of the problem in school-lunch costs because districts are paying bigger delivery surcharges to compensate for fuel costs. Provo School District had paid 4 cents a case in the past. Now, it's 17 cents a case, McComb said. Some schools receive 500 cases per week.

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