Food Prices Are Starting To Go Down—except For Hot Dogs

If you were bracing yourself to pay $40 for a regular grocery store steak (instead of, say, premium Kobe or Wagyu), you can rest easy. Meat prices are starting to fall, for the first time since the pandemic started back in March.

"From June to July," CNN reports, "beef and veal prices went down 8.2%. Uncooked beef roasts and steaks got 8.7% cheaper. Pork prices fell 3.2%. Consumers paid 5.7% less for ham and pork chops, and 2.6% less for chicken." That means we Americans can once again fulfill our manifest destiny as a nation of carnivores!

Weirdly, though, the price of hot dogs remains stubbornly high. Maybe it's because they include several types of meat at once? Or, CNN speculates, it had something to do with the Fourth of July holiday, when it's a patriotic duty to consume forcemeat.

The price of other groceries—eggs, potatoes, peanut butter, breakfast cereal—decreased as well. Mysteriously, though, soup, lettuce, and margarine remain high. Is it possible that this is the economy's way of encouraging us to eat high-calorie food to keep our constitutions strong for whatever lies ahead.