Food at home
Groceries: 22 single-SKU items from BLS APU (milk, eggs, ground beef, beef steak, bacon, pork chops, whole chicken, white bread, whole-wheat bread, flour, rice, bananas, oranges, lemons, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, cheddar, ice cream, sugar, coffee, frozen orange juice). Each priced as a fixed SKU, Carli-averaged, no CPI.
Sources
Precedence ladder for food at home. Lower precedence wins where multiple sources cover the same period. The engine walks the ladder per period with chain-link rescale at source transitions.
| Precedence | Source | Series ID | Cadence | Geography |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000709112 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000708111 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000703112 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000706111 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000702111 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000711211 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000712112 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000715211 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000717311 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000701312 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000711311 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000712311 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000710212 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000701111 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000702212 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000FC3101 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000704111 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000704211 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000710411 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000711412 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000712211 | monthly | national |
| 0 | BLS Average Price Data (APU) | APU0000713111 | monthly | national |
Weight across archetypes
How food at home is weighted in each of the 10 published archetypes. Sorted by weight, highest first. National Average is the headline citation surface.
| Archetype | Weight | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Retiree | 13.5397% | View archetype → |
| Income — Second Quintile | 12.8882% | View archetype → |
| Working Parent | 12.1785% | View archetype → |
| Income — Middle Quintile | 12.1413% | View archetype → |
| Income — Fourth Quintile | 11.7795% | View archetype → |
| Homeowner | 11.5885% | View archetype → |
| National Average | 11.3105% | View archetype → |
| Income — Lowest Quintile | 11.1432% | View archetype → |
| Renter | 10.6428% | View archetype → |
| Income — Highest Quintile | 10.5549% | View archetype → |
Substitution history
Substitution log entries that touched this stratum. Each entry
bumps the basket version and is reproducible from observations
tagged with their basket_version.
2026-06-07 — Deeper food-at-home sampling: 13 → 22 BLS APU items
Version: data tag 1.0.12 → 1.0.13
What changed. The food_at_home stratum's single-SKU set grew from 13 to 22 BLS Average Price items. Added (each verified against the BLS API for continuous 2000-01→present coverage): flour, whole-wheat bread, beef steaks, bacon, pork chops, ice cream, lemons, iceberg lettuce, and frozen orange juice. The stratum's basket weight is unchanged — this is a within-stratum deepening, not a stratum add/remove, so the archetype weights still sum to 1.0 with no renormalization.
Why. The original 13 thinly sampled protein (only ground chuck, whole chicken, eggs) and carried no pork and no non-ground beef cut, so the Carli average under-represented meat — a high-inflation group. The new mix spreads across grains, beef, pork, dairy, produce, and juice without letting any group dominate (meat and produce each ≈27% of SKUs). Still 100% BLS APU observed average prices — no BLS CPI. APU carries no processed/prepared-food SKUs, so the set necessarily skews toward staples/produce/meat — a disclosed limit, not a fixable skew.
Effect on headline. food_at_home's long-run rate rises 2.47 → 2.72%/yr (correcting the thin protein sample); the National Average headline moves +0.018pp, 3.540 → 3.559%/yr, index 246.36 → 247.50. Surviving rows were re-stamped basket_version 1.0.12 → 1.0.13 (values unchanged); the 9 new SKU series were ingested at 1.0.13. Strata count stays 15.
Methodology
See the basket page for all 20 strata and the per-stratum source map. The methodology page covers the load-bearing pillars including the rules around source-precedence ladders, chain-link splicing at source transitions, and the no-fabricated-data invariant.