Astonishing? Hardly. This was guaranteed to happen.
Scary? I get up every day wondering how we are going to survive.
IMO, since I do all of the shopping in my house, the food numbers he quoted understate the increases.
Indeed. My wife does most of the shopping (she won't take me because I always find something extra we "need" :-) ). I used work at Wally World and when payday came around, I'd take my leftover pocket money and buy canned goods for our reserve. My experience over a two-year period:
Canned veggies up over 20%
Whole chickens up 100%
WM brand Spam up over 21% (while Spam went up 10%)
WM salsa (great stuff - major staple in our house) up 33%
Bread up 30%, WM Deli bread up 50%
and so on
The flip side is Smith's grocery has been having "case lot" sales of veggies at 50c a can, Span at $1.76, etc. twice a year with gradually (5%) increases. The consumer is still going under tough, with EVERYTHING except wages increasing.