I bought same Aldi groceries from 2022 – here’s how much prices have soared

The cost of living crisis could be set to worsen due to the war in the Middle East. As a result of the conflict triggered by American and Israeli strikes against Iran, there are fears that once again food, energy and petrol prices will skyrocket once again.

However, this wouldn’t be the first time these three necessities have risen in the past four years with events such as the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic having a major impact on how the money in our wallets goes.

With that in mind, we decided to see just how much things had changed by taking the prices of 13 items in 2022 and comparing those prices to today. In order to do this we chose 13 items from a 2022 shopping list, picked a branch of popular supermarket Aldi and one intrepid reporter to buy some food.

Our results, shown in the table further down, demonstrate just how much certain food prices have changed over the last four years.

The highest price rises came in the from of the easy peelers and the diet lemonade. The easy peelers rose in price form 72p to £1.75; a rise of 58 percent. Meanwhile the diet lemonade, all two litres of it, rose from 23p to 49p.

Further down the list of cost, other double figure price rises were seen in the red onions, packet of four salmon fillets, and strawberry jam. The red onions rose by 29 percent from 67p to 95p whilst the everyday essentials strawberry jam rose by 36 percent from 31p to 49. Four salmon fillets rose by 35 percent from £4.40 to £6.85.

As well as vegetables, fizzy drinks and condiments, pasta and bacon also saw double figure increases in price. A 500g bag of penne pasta now costs 21 percent more than it did in 2022 (41p vs 32p) whilst spaghetti now costs 30 percent more (33p vs 23p).

Regardless of whether your bacon is smoked or unsmoked, 1kg of it now costs £1 more than it did in 2022 (£4.69 vs £3.69) which equates to a price rise of just over 19 percent. Whilst we have used Aldi in our test sample, there have been price rises across the board, with more thought to come.

Overall, whilst the price rises were not unexpected, I was stunned by how much some of the products had risen such as the easy peelers and the spaghetti.

However, I am also concerned by the price rises to come because of the Middle East conflict. How will the below table look in three to six months time?

The fear of food prices has been on most people’s minds since the latest war in the Middle East began. And the Express recently revealed that there are 11 foods expected to rise as a result.

“Global conflicts, along with climate change, are causing food shortages, supply chain issues and price spikes in the UK and beyond,” said Jim Mellon, an investor and Chief Executive of Agronomics. Meanwhile, retail analysts at Omnisend said that oil and gas prices will make the transport of goods more expensive, which will eventually be felt in the final price displayed in shops.