It is probably currently lower. It takes ~ 12 months for inflationary events to roll off the “annual inflation” stats. This is why stories like “After years of no inflation, US encounters 10% annual inflation for the third quarter in a row!” are total nonsense. Another way to write the headline is “There has not been significant deflation since the spike in inflation last year”.
If you are willing to substitute brands, then the number will probably be a lot lower. For instance, Hershey’s brand cocoa used to be inexpensive, but not costs about the same as the most expensive brands at our store. If you switch to the expensive brand (and update the 2020 list), you’ll be looking at 10-20% inflation instead of 50-100%. I’ve noticed this for a lot of products we purchase (some of which simply became unavailable after a few months of price hikes). This mostly means we’re either switching from midrange brands to the most or least expensive, depending on the item.
Of course, this doesn’t actually lower our grocery bill vs. 2020, but we’re also not paying 70% more.
