http://salem-news.com/articles/july192006/food_prices_71906.php
USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) has recently released food expenditure statistics for 2005. They show that Americans are spending, on average, 9.9 percent of their disposable income on food.
That’s up slightly from 9.7 percent in 2004 but very consistent with figures over the past five years. The percentage dropped to single digits for the first time in recorded U.S. history in 2000.
Twenty years ago, American consumers spent 11.7 percent of their disposable income on food. Thirty years ago, that figure was 15.1 percent. Going back in history, Americans spent about 20 percent of their income on food about the time today’s baby boomers were born. In 1933, the figure was more than 25 percent.