Rising Food Prices Add $152 A Month To Grocery Bills For Many Americans

Half Of Survey Respondents Have Skipped Meals As Costs Climb

Paying $152 more each month for groceries adds up to $1,824 over a year. That is the average increase reported by U.S. adults who said their grocery spending has climbed since last year, and they made up more than half of the people in a new survey.

Food costs have also reached the dinner table itself. Half of all respondents (50.6%) said they have skipped meals because of rising food prices, and 57.3% said they have shrunk their portion sizes for the same reason.

Self Financial, a company that sells credit-building products, commissioned the survey of 1,035 U.S. adults in August 2026. Answers were self-reported, and respondents skewed heavily toward women (82.4%) and toward ages 29 to 44 (79.6%), so the numbers describe this group rather than the country as a whole.

Rising food prices raise grocery bills for more than half of respondents

One question compared grocery spending now with spending a year ago. More than half of respondents (53.3%) said their household spends more. About a quarter (25.7%) said their spending had stayed about the same, and 21% said they now spend less.

Federal data cited in the release point the same direction. In August 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the cost of food at home rose 2.7% in the 12 months through July 2026. A national average and a dollar amount reported by survey respondents are different kinds of measurements, though. National price data tracks how much the same items cost over time, while a household’s grocery bill also reflects what it buys and how much of it.

Price pressure also shaped what landed in the cart. When respondents rated how much food prices had shaped their shopping over the past year, 44.4% picked the middle option, moderately. Another 21.8% said slightly, and 13.3% said not at all. At the high end, 15.6% rated the influence second-highest, and 5% rated it at the top of the scale, which the survey labeled completely.

Shopping habits varied as well. One in ten respondents (10.2%) said they always compare food prices before buying, 19.5% said they often do, and 38.6% said they sometimes do. On the other side, 16.5% rarely compare prices and 15.2% never do.

Half of respondents skipped meals

Skipping meals was the survey’s starkest result, and the release says little about what sits behind it. Frequency is not reported, so a person who missed one lunch last month and a person who regularly goes without dinner could both land in the 50.6% who said they have skipped meals. Reduced portions, reported by 57.3%, are just as open-ended: the release does not say how much smaller the plates got.

Money worries reached beyond food, too. When respondents picked the areas of healthy living most affected by their finances, 28.1% named mental health and stress management. Physical activity and fitness followed at 27.5%, then diet and nutrition at 21.9%, sleep and rest at 19.9%, and preventive care, such as checkups and dental visits, at 9.6%. Those percentages add up to more than 100%, which fits the survey’s note that some questions allowed more than one answer.

Across the survey, 36.9% of respondents said they are currently unable to afford a healthy lifestyle. A larger share, 51.5%, said they do not think a healthy lifestyle is accessible to people on an average income.

Respondents also described a gap between what they spend and what they would like to spend. They reported spending an average of $407 a month on food and groceries. Asked what they would spend if money were no object, the average answer rose to $497, a difference of $90 a month. For comparison, the release points to Self Financial’s 2025 research, which put the average U.S. weekly grocery shop at $132.57 before tax, or about $576 a month.

Rising food prices make healthy eating harder

Healthy eating took the clearest hit. Four in five respondents (80.5%) said rising food prices have made it harder to maintain a healthy diet over the past year. Of those, 26.9% said prices had greatly affected their ability to eat healthily, and 53.6% said prices had somewhat affected it. Only 19.5% said prices had not made healthy eating harder.

Produce was one place where the pullback showed up. Nearly two-thirds (64.7%) said the cost of food has led them to buy fewer fruits and vegetables. It is unclear from the release whether that share counts all 1,035 respondents or only those whose shopping had changed because of cost, so it is best read as a rough indicator. U.S. dietary guidelines recommend fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy diet, so a cutback there runs against standard advice. Whether the reductions involved fresh, frozen, or canned produce, and how much less respondents are buying, goes unstated.

Who answered the survey, and what it cannot show

Self Financial describes itself in the release as a venture-backed startup that helps people build credit and savings. Its survey asked 1,035 U.S. adults about their diets and financial habits. Smaller shares were ages 18 to 28 (10.8%), 45 to 60 (9.4%), and 61 to 79 (0.2%), and men made up 16.4% of the group.

Adults 61 and older are nearly absent, so the survey says almost nothing about older Americans. Several details that help readers judge a survey are also missing from the release: who ran the fieldwork, how respondents were recruited, whether results were adjusted to match the U.S. population, and a margin of error.

Everything in the survey is self-reported. Respondents said rising prices led them to skip meals, but a survey like this cannot confirm the reason, measure how often it happens, or rule out other pressures, such as rent or medical bills, that may have played a part.

Results from a group this narrow cannot speak for the whole country. Still, skipped meals are a sharper warning sign than a bigger grocery bill, and a nationally representative follow-up would show whether these respondents are an outlier or an early signal.

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