GABRIELA GALARZA
@ggsueiro
Updated Monday, February 21, 2022-02:26
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Pizza, with or without pineapple?
This classic debate that usually brings more enemies than defenders, now makes the difference in the pocket of each side.
In this way, those who favor pineapple on pizza are 13.7% more expensive to prepare one at home than those who choose to do without it.
The reason?
Fruit is, together with olive oil and flour and other cereals,
the basic product in the shopping basket that has become more expensive in the last year, specifically 8.8%.
The National Institute of Statistics (INE) published last Tuesday the definitive data of the annual variation of the general CPI -the conjunctural indicator that measures the evolution of consumer goods and services acquired in Spanish households- that reflect
a rise of 6, 1% in the month of January
.
Prices have not stopped growing since the beginning of 2021, when the inflation rate stood at 0.5%, largely as a consequence of the increase in the cost of electricity, gasoline and diesel.
2022 began in a similar way to how 2021 ended and January became the second month -behind last December- with the most expensive electricity in history in the Spanish wholesale market, ending with a generation cost higher than €201/MWh.
These rises translate into an increase in the cost of production, transport and distribution of companies and, therefore, in the price of
food, which today is 4.8% more expensive
than a year ago.
To cook a Hawaiian pizza you need:
flour, yeast, a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil for the dough
.
To that we must add the
cheese, the tomato, the ham
and the element of discord: the
pineapple
.
Buying all these ingredients in a supermarket in Spain has an average price of 5.49 euros [only the necessary amount of each of the ingredients to make a single pizza, according to their own calculations based on real prices of three supermarkets verified by EL MUNDO ].
An easy-to-prepare and cheap dish, until now within the reach of all households, but
today it is already 23.71% more expensive than during the same period of the previous year,
when its price ranged from 4.44 euros.
Despite the fact that the inflation rate falls four tenths with respect to the month of December (6.5%), the slope in January has been even more pronounced this year, if possible, and it is precisely certain foods such as flour, olive oil and fruit which has triggered the price of the shopping basket and, in this case, the cost of preparing this dish of Italian origin.
The situation in Spain is not an isolated case and filling the shopping cart is also expensive in much of Europe.
The year-on-year inflation rate in
the euro zone stood at 5.1% last January
and becomes the highest figure in the historical series that begins in 1997, as indicated by the data published by Eurostat.
"Inflation has risen a lot in recent months and was even more surprising in January," acknowledged the president of the ECB,
Christine Lagarde,
on February 14 during her speech at a session of the European Parliament.
However, she indicated that "the objective is an inflation of 2% in the medium term" and that to achieve it, she explained, she will act "in due course".
In this sense, the ECB blames that, as in the Spanish case, "at least 50% of the increase in prices is due to the high cost of
energy
, which rose by 28.6%, when in December it stood at 25.9%.
Another factor that explains this rise has to do with the year-on-year rise in the cost of fresh food, as indicated by the Statistical Office of the European Union, whose registered variation rate was 5.2%.
Among the main economies of the continent, Spain is the country in which prices have skyrocketed the most, only behind
the Netherlands,
which experienced a rebound similar to that of our country, with 6.4%, and Belgium, which leads the ranking with a rise of 7.6%.
Behind,
Germany
(4.9%),
Italy
(4.8%),
Portugal
(3.3%) and
France
(2.9%).
EL MUNDO has also compiled the price of each of the foods needed to prepare a Hawaiian pizza from the websites of the main supermarket chains in the selected countries.
In addition,
the same unit of measurement
has been established for each of the products in order to carry out an analysis that is as accurate as possible.
Therefore, making a pizza with pineapple in these countries has a price that ranges between the 5.16 euros that a Portuguese spends to buy the different ingredients and the 6.39 that they cost in a supermarket in Germany.
However,
in these seven previously mentioned regions, it is more expensive to prepare it at home than a year ago
, in all of them motivated by the high price of fresh foods such as ham, cheese, tomato and pineapple, and only in some like Belgium and the Netherlands -without counting Spain- also due to the increase in the price of olive oil.
Spain is
among the large economies of the EU the country that has experienced the greatest increase in the price
of the products that fill the shopping basket in just one year.
Only
the Netherlands shows worse data
.
If we extrapolate theory to practice, in the case of homemade Hawaiian pizza, it translates into an increase of 1.05 euros on the total price.
In the case of the Dutch - the only ones who are ahead of us - preparing a Hawaiian costs
36.56%
more this year than in January of last year.
In other words, they are 1.8 euros more than what they have to pay out of their pockets in a period of just 12 months.
In
Italy
, the same pizza has only become more expensive by 1.56% in one year;
cooking it at home in
France
has risen 2.04%;
in
Germany
, the same recipe is today 6.89% more expensive;
in
Portugal
, 3.36%;
and in
Belgium
, 0.79%.
All quite far from the 23.7% more that is paid today in
Spain
compared to just a year ago.
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