Food · Single item chart

Cheese.

Cheddar · natural · per pound · US city average · all available data

Cheese vs. official inflation, 1978–2025

Indexed: 1984 = 100 · Three lines, three measures of inflation: what consumers actually paid (retail), the BLS CPI subindex for this category, and overall CPI-U All Items

Cheddar cheese, retail price (BLS APU0000710212, 1984+) Cheese, CPI subindex (BLS, 1977+) CPI-U All Items (BLS, 1947+)

Reading the chart. Natural cheddar cheese tracks broader dairy inflation closely. From 1984 to 2025 it grew 1.90x while CPI grew 3.10x — a 39% cooler trajectory. The CPI subindex covers a broader cheese-and-related-products category which has tracked similarly. Like milk, cheese benefits from large-scale industrial dairy production and federal price supports.