Fig. 2: Average prices by food group, January 2019–June 2021.

This figure shows results from 369,088 price observations for 1,344 unique country-items in up to 88 countries. Each price is normalized to 100 in January 2019. A total of 87 countries report prices for breads and cereals; 55 for fruits and vegetables; 51 for pulses, nuts and seeds; 50 for meats; 46 for oils and fats; 41 for sugar and confectionery; 30 for dairy and eggs; and 24 for fish and seafood. Tubers, such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, are categorized as fruits and vegetables in the analysis. a, The global mean (coloured dot) and 95% CI (coloured bar) in each month. February 2020 is shown as a vertical dashed black line. The solid black horizontal line indicates a price level of 100 as of January 2019. b, The global mean (coloured line) and its 95% CI (grey shading) at each level of cumulative monthly COVID-19 cases per million. The horizontal axis of b is truncated at the far right to show 99% of the individual observations, although the regression line was estimated using all data, including the 1% of prices observed with COVID-19 rates that are off the charts to the right for each food group. The black dashed horizontal line shows the intercept of the regression model, representing the estimated normalized prices at the COVID-19 case number of zero.