Nowflation’s food gauge reads 2.44% year over year as of October 17, 2026 (0.000pp on the day, −0.180pp on the week, −0.180pp on the month; level 139.495, January 2018 = 100). The official BLS CPI food (all) was 2.5% for September 2026, released October 14, 2026 — a gap of −0.06pp today, +0.22pp like for like (the gauge’s September 2026 average against that print). The category carries 13.7% of the CPI basket; 0% of that weight is priced from live sources today. Next print: October 2026 CPI on November 10, 2026 at 8:30 AM ET. A measurement, not a forecast.
| Component | Basket weight | YoY | Contribution to the category | Feed today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food Away | 5.4% | 3.46% | +1.38pp | OFFICIAL — CUSR0000SEFV (official subindex, held between prints) |
| Food at Home | 8.3% | 1.77% | +1.06pp | OFFICIAL — CUSR0000SAF11 (official subindex, held between prints) |
Nowflation’s food gauge reads 2.44% year over year as of October 17, 2026, measured daily on the CPI basket weights (13.7% of the basket). The official BLS CPI food (all) was 2.5% for September 2026, released October 14, 2026.
Today’s reading is −0.06pp versus the last print. No component in this category has a live market source today, so between prints it holds the official subindexes from the September 2026 print itself. What is left is construction: the daily reading aggregates the seasonally adjusted subindexes on the December chain, while the official figure is the unadjusted category index, rounded to one decimal. Like for like — the gauge’s average over September 2026 against that print — the gap was +0.22pp, because during September 2026 the gauge still held earlier prints.
The October 2026 CPI prints on November 10, 2026 at 8:30 AM ET; this page steps to it the same morning.
The BLS December chain over the member components (index Jan 2018 = 100), the aggregation the headline Gauge uses under method v1.5: each year’s relative-importance weights multiply price relatives since the previous December, and the year-over-year change joins the year-ago-to-December segment to the December-to-today one. A component priced on a monthly source compares that source’s latest month with the same month a year earlier, and takes the official subindex while BLS has published a newer month. The whole history on this page is computed under this method. Each contribution is the component’s exact share of the category’s year-over-year change; they add up to the reading. Food at home holds the official CPI food-at-home subindex between prints (a USDA advertised-price composite is ingested as a diagnostic but not spliced — it failed the r ≥ 0.7 bar); food away from home holds its official subindex. Both step on the BLS release calendar.
The BLS December chain over the member components (index Jan 2018 = 100), the aggregation the headline Gauge uses under method v1.5: each year’s relative-importance weights multiply price relatives since the previous December, and the year-over-year change joins the year-ago-to-December segment to the December-to-today one. A component priced on a monthly source compares that source’s latest month with the same month a year earlier, and takes the official subindex while BLS has published a newer month. The whole history on this page is computed under this method. Each contribution is the component’s exact share of the category’s year-over-year change; they add up to the reading. Food at home holds the official CPI food-at-home subindex between prints (a USDA advertised-price composite is ingested as a diagnostic but not spliced — it failed the r ≥ 0.7 bar); food away from home holds its official subindex. Both step on the BLS release calendar. The official subindex is quoted at the last print (NSA, one decimal). The daily reading is a measurement of today; the like-for-like comparison is the calendar-month average of the daily series for the print’s reference month (at_print_month_pct), which is what the gap-at-print figure uses. Components: food_home, food_away; weights from the BLS CPI-U relative-importance table (engine weights.json) (2026). Engine construction v1.5.
| Item | Page |
|---|---|
| eggs | /eggs |
| milk | /milk |
| butter | /butter |
| cheese | /cheese |
| bacon | /bacon |
| chicken | /chicken |
| ground beef | /ground-beef |
| bread | /bread |
| flour | /flour |
| rice | /rice |
| coffee | /coffee |
| chocolate | /chocolate |
| potatoes | /potatoes |
| tomatoes | /tomatoes |
| bananas | /bananas |
| oranges | /oranges |
Embed: <iframe src="https://nowflation.com/embed?view=category&c=food"> (builder).