Food · Single item chart

Pasta.

Spaghetti and macaroni · per pound · US city average · all available data

Pasta 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

Pasta, retail price (BLS APU0000701322, 1984+) Rice, pasta, cornmeal, CPI subindex (BLS, 1978+) CPI-U All Items (BLS, 1947+)

Reading the chart. Spaghetti and macaroni grew 1.80x at retail from 1984 to 2025 — one of the most stable price trajectories in our food basket. The BLS CPI subindex shown here is for the broader 'rice, pasta, cornmeal' category (no narrower subindex exists for pasta alone), and grew 3.89x over a similar window, closer to overall CPI. Pasta is the cleanest example of an industrial food product where mass production and global supply chains keep prices roughly flat in real terms over decades.