Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library
If you think about what you - or your parents - were spending your money on 30 years ago, it might be quite different to how you spend it now.
You're not going down to the local Blockbuster at the weekend to pick up a VHS of a film, and you're not paying to have photos developed at the local mall.
You might be making dinner from a My Food Bag kit in a cast iron wok rather than firing up your electric frying pan to cook saveloys and brussels sprouts (a strange mix, but you'll see why shortly).
Stats NZ's consumer price index (CPI) data gives a snapshot of what New Zealanders were spending their money on over the years, because it is adjusted at regular intervals to reflect our behaviour.
Here's some of what it shows us.
Food
Our food habits have changed a lot over the years.
Cheap pudding staples sago and tapioca dropped out of the CPI in 1949. Gooseberries followed in 1955. Herrings in tomato sauce left the basket in 1965 and tripe and sheep's tongue followed in 1975. Canned corn was cut in 2017. Luncheon meat dropped out in 2020.
Meal kits were added in 2024, at the same time as celery was taken off, replaced by spinach.
The idea of having a milkman doing a run might seem like a relic, but delivered milk hung on in the CPI until 1999.
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