Utah consumers get break as gas drops, food prices dip

Consumers are seeing a small break this month on their trip to the grocery store, at least if they were shopping for 15 common household goods the Deseret News has been tracking.

The total price of those goods decreased 3.8 percent from December to January. A 14.6 percent drop in the price of regular gasoline over the past month more than overcame an increase in the price of frozen corn.

Most items, in fact, were unchanged or dropped just a little bit. And since we started tracking prices in April, the combined total for the 15 items is down 12.6 percent.

"Buying gasoline certainly doesn't hurt as much," said Carole Schmidt of Salt Lake City as she pumped gasoline at a Maverik station Friday, where a gallon of regular was going for just under $1.40. "But I'm not counting on it staying down."

According to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express, the average price Friday for a gallon of unleaded in Utah was $1.46 — a far cry from the peak average of $4.22 on July 18, or even the $1.72 it averaged a month ago.

Many grocery staples on the list were unchanged since our last shopping spree in early December, including milk, bread, diapers, orange juice, Oreos and bananas.

Jeans were down $2, or 9 percent, but the sale was slated to end over the weekend. As for pizza and a movie, they're unchanged, as well.

A pound of 85 percent lean hamburger now costs exactly the same price as a loaf of white Home Pride bread where we shopped. But the price of Cheerios dropped 12.8 percent over the past month, while eggs were down a whopping 43.4 percent to 86 cents a dozen for the large AA size.

Even the frozen-corn price — a 99 percent jump from $1 to $1.99 — wasn't as bad as it looked, because the corn was on a very good sale when last we shopped.

Meanwhile, an economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that while grocery inflation is likely to ease in this new year, prices may never again be as low as they were before they started their climb. And trends that have pushed prices higher, like growing global demand and diversion of grains to fuel production, may ease, but they're not going away.

Experts also predict that current lower gasoline prices are not going to stay that way, and it will cost considerably more to fill the tank by summer.

But as long as wholesale prices are down, consumers will see those breaks at the checkstand, said Rand Mickelson, spokesman for Associated Food Stores. "As wholesale prices decline, (our) retailers will certainly look for every opportunity to pass the savings on to customers," he said.

Contributing: McClatchy-Tribune News Service. E-mail: lois@desnews.com