Grocery budgets differ sharply by household composition, income, and whether food is prepared at home. USDA benchmarks, federal consumer-spending data, and food-security research provide several useful reference points, but they measure different things: recommended food-plan costs, observed spending, prices, and household adequacy are not interchangeable.
Contents
- USDA grocery-budget benchmarks
- Average household food spending
- How income changes grocery budgets
- Food categories and price changes
- Groceries compared with eating out
- Food-security pressure and budget adequacy
USDA grocery-budget benchmarks
USDA’s December 2025 food plans are national U.S. averages for individuals in four-person households. The plans assume that all meals and snacks are prepared at home. They are useful planning benchmarks, not a guarantee of what every household will spend; USDA recommends household-size adjustments.
For adults aged 19–50, the monthly low-cost, moderate-cost, and liberal plan amounts were $308.40, $387.20, and $472.90 for a male, and $267.80, $326.50, and $416.00 for a female. The same source lists a child aged 2–3 at $167.50, $200.50, and $243.90 across those three plans.
Age and sex also change the benchmark for older children. A child aged 6–8 had monthly plan amounts of $255.00, $295.30, and $345.40. For a child aged 9–11, the figures were $262.50, $338.20, and $394.10. A male aged 14–18 had amounts of $311.70, $391.00, and $459.40, while a female aged 14–18 had $262.40, $313.60, and $387.90. These figures come from USDA Cost of Food December 2025 at Three Levels.
Older adults have lower benchmarks than many working-age adults in the same four-person-household framework. For a male aged 71 or older, the December 2025 amounts were $288.00, $353.60, and $434.00. For a female aged 71 or older, they were $260.70, $319.70, and $381.50. A meal plan built around these numbers should still account for household size, dietary requirements, local prices, and how much food is actually prepared at home.
Average household food spending
Observed consumer spending offers a different perspective from USDA’s plans. The average U.S. consumer unit spent $10,169 on total food in 2024, including food prepared at home and food purchased away from home. Food represented 12.9% of average total annual expenditures that year. These are averages across consumer units, not recommended grocery budgets, according to Consumer Expenditures – 2024.
Food at home accounted for $6,224 per average consumer unit in 2024, up 2.8% from $6,053 in 2023. Food away from home accounted for another $3,945, up 0.3% from 2023. The difference between these observed averages and a food-plan benchmark matters: a household can spend more or less depending on convenience foods, dietary choices, household size, shopping location, and restaurant use.
The 2024 food-at-home increase also exceeded the 1.2% rise in food-at-home prices. That comparison describes the national averages; it does not show that every household bought the same basket. It does, however, indicate why a grocery budget based on an older spending pattern may need review.
How income changes grocery budgets
Food-at-home spending rose across the income distribution in 2023, but the levels were substantially different. The lowest income quintile spent an average of $3,707 on food at home, compared with $4,680 for the second quintile, $5,756 for the middle quintile, $6,917 for the fourth quintile, and $9,198 for the highest quintile. These figures are from Consumer expenditures in 2023.
The income relationship becomes clearer when total food is compared with before-tax income. In 2024, the lowest-income household quintile spent $5,498 on total food, equal to 33.0% of before-tax income. The middle-income quintile spent $9,097, equal to 12.2% of before-tax income. The highest-income quintile spent $16,989, but that represented 6.4% of before-tax income. Ag and Food Statistics: Charting the Essentials – Food Prices and Spending provides these comparisons.
For context, average total annual expenditures in 2024 were $35,046 for the lowest income quintile and $150,342 for the highest. The higher-income group spent more dollars on food, while the lower-income group devoted a much larger share of income to it. A grocery budget therefore cannot be judged only by its dollar amount; the same weekly total can create very different pressures for different households.
| 2024 household income quintile | Total food spending | Share of before-tax income |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest | $5,498 | 33.0% |
| Middle | $9,097 | 12.2% |
| Highest | $16,989 | 6.4% |
Food categories and price changes
The average 2024 food-at-home budget was not evenly distributed across categories. Consumer units spent $1,414 on meat, poultry, fish, and eggs at home, up 21.5% from 2023. They spent $779 on cereals and bakery products, down 6.1%; $631 on dairy products, up 4.8%; $953 on fruits and vegetables, down 3.5%; and $2,447 on other food at home, down 0.9%. These category figures are reported in Consumer Expenditures – 2024.
Annual price changes help explain why category planning needs to be revisited. U.S. food-at-home prices increased 11.4% in 2022, 5.0% in 2023, 1.2% in 2024, and 2.3% in 2025. The 20-year historical average annual increase through 2025 was 2.6%. The historical series and the following estimates are from USDA’s Food Price Outlook – Summary Findings.
USDA’s 2026 figures are forecasts, not observed results. The forecast calls for food-at-home prices to rise 3.2%, with a 95% prediction interval of 1.3% to 5.2%. Category forecasts are especially uneven: beef and veal prices are forecast to rise 12.1%, with an interval of 6.6% to 18.1%; pork is forecast to rise 1.5%, with an interval from −2.2% to 5.2%; and poultry is forecast to rise 0.5%, with an interval from −2.3% to 3.4%.
Retail egg prices are forecast to fall 29.8%, with an interval from −38.8% to −18.3%. Fresh-vegetable prices are forecast to rise 7.8%, with an interval of 3.9% to 11.9%, while fresh-fruit prices are forecast to rise 1.8%, with an interval from −0.9% to 4.7%. Sugar-and-sweets prices are forecast to rise 6.3%, with an interval of 4.1% to 8.4%, and nonalcoholic-beverage prices are forecast to rise 5.8%, with an interval of 3.6% to 7.9%. Prediction intervals show uncertainty around the estimate; they are not promises about the price of a particular store’s basket.
Groceries compared with eating out
National spending totals show that food away from home is a major part of the food budget. In 2024, U.S. food-at-home spending reached $1.06 trillion, compared with $1.52 trillion for food away from home. Food away from home accounted for 58.9% of total U.S. food expenditures. The same ERS source reports that food-at-home spending rose 1.4% from 2023 to $901 billion in its food-dollar series; the series uses a source-specific definition, so its total should not be treated as identical to every other food-spending measure.
Longer-term inflation-adjusted figures also show the scale of change. Food-at-home expenditures reached $1.10 trillion in 2025, up from $738 billion in 1997. Food-away-from-home expenditures reached $1.41 trillion in 2025, up from $818 billion in 1997. In 2025, consumers spent 4.8% of disposable personal income on food at home and 4.9% on food away from home, for 9.7% on total food.
The ERS series reports that inflation-adjusted food-at-home spending fell 2.6% in 2023 and rose 1.8% in 2024. These measures help distinguish a grocery-budget problem from a broader food-spending pattern: reducing restaurant purchases may change total food spending even when the grocery line itself is stable.
Food-security pressure and budget adequacy
Spending averages do not show whether a household can consistently obtain enough food. In 2024, the typical U.S. household spent $75 per person per week on food. The median household’s weekly food spending was 1.18 times the December 2024 Thrifty Food Plan cost, according to Household Food Security in the United States in 2024. The ratios include food at home, food away from home, and free food unless otherwise stated, so they are descriptive population statistics rather than grocery-only targets.
Food-security status was associated with different spending ratios. Food-secure households had median weekly food spending equal to 1.18 times the Thrifty Food Plan, compared with 1.06 times for food-insecure households. Among households with children, the ratios were 1.07 when food secure and 0.97 when food insecure. Married-couple families had ratios of 1.09 and 0.93, respectively.
The pattern was not identical for people living alone. Women living alone had median weekly food spending equal to 1.44 times the Thrifty Food Plan when food secure and 1.42 times when food insecure. For men living alone, the figures were 1.39 and 1.19. These estimates appear in the Statistical Supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2024.
Poverty status and access to free groceries also mattered. Households below the poverty line had median weekly food spending equal to 0.94 times the Thrifty Food Plan when food secure and 0.95 times when food insecure. Households below 130% of the poverty line had ratios of 0.93 and 0.95. Among low-income households, those receiving free groceries during the previous 12 months had a ratio of 0.82, compared with 0.99 for those not receiving free groceries.
These findings put grocery-budget statistics in context. A benchmark can help organize meals and shopping, while an average can describe national behavior, but neither alone establishes that a particular household’s budget is adequate. Household size, food prices, food access, free-food assistance, and whether spending includes meals away from home all affect what the numbers mean.