Consumers are keeping a close watch on the price of groceries, specifically the cost of eggs.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the grocery category overall went up 0.4% in January 2023 compared to December 2022 and is up 11.3% from a year ago. That's lower than last month though, when grocery prices were up 11.8% year-over-year.
Overall, food prices, including food away from home increased 10.1%.
[Read more: Inflation rises 0.5% over last month in January, most since October]
Specifically, egg prices drove the index higher, up 70.1% year-over-year, though the cost is rising at a slower rate than last month, up 8.5% month-over-month from December to January. In December, the monthly inflationary showed the cost of eggs jumped 59.9% year-over-year and 11.1% month-over-month from November to December.
Food items that saw a decline month-over-month include vegetables, including tomatoes (down 7.7%), potatoes (down 2.9%), and lettuce (down 3.6%).
Last month, the cost of lettuce got the attention of Grammy-award winning rapper Cardi B after the year-over-year cost spiked 24.9% due to a virus, Impatiens necrotic spot virus. Year-over-year prices still remain higher for the leafy vegetable, up 17.2%.
Other categories lower on a monthly basis include pork chops and hot dogs (both down 3.5%), carbonated drinks (down 1.5%), butter and lunchmeats (both down 1.7%), flour and prepared flour mixes (down 0.9%), processed fish and seafood (down 0.7%) with shelf-stable fish and seafood driving that number lower (down 2.3%), chicken (down 0.6%), white bread (down 0.1%), uncooked ground beef (down 0.2%), bacon, breakfast sausage, and related products (down 0.5%).
Butter still remains higher on a yearly basis though, up 26.3%.
Other categories higher month-over-month, include ham excluding canned (up 3.5%), cookies (up 2.5%), instant coffee (up 3.6%), uncooked beef roasts (up 2.0%), fresh fish and seafood (up 1.6%) and "other condiments" (up 6.2%), in addition to prepared salads (up 2.8%).
Fresh fruits also cost more (up 0.8%). Citrus fruits drove that number higher (up 2.8%), along with apples, (up 1.9%) and bananas (up 1.5%). This comes as Florida saw a decline in its citrus production across all types last season, per the Department of Agriculture.
Last month, Judith Ganes, president of J Ganes Consulting said, "The market clearly ran up close to record high prices, because of the low crop in Florida," in a phone call with Yahoo Finance.
The three factors that impacted crops, she said, were a freeze late last January, damage from Hurricane Ian and citrus greening, which is spread by a disease-infected insect, the Asian citrus psyllid.