Pantry Preparedness with Leisa Sutton
A well-stocked pantry isn't just about food; it's about freedom. The freedom from worry, and the freedom to feel confident and secure, knowing your family is cared for.
Pantry Preparedness with Leisa Sutton
Grocery Stores Are Quietly Changing What They Stock — Here's What's Disappearing First
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Something is happening at your grocery store right now that most shoppers are walking right past. Packages are getting smaller. Products are being reformulated. And manufacturers are counting on you not to check the net weight.
This week I have covered the big structural forces bearing down on fall grocery prices — the fertilizer crisis (Monday) and the record Fourth of July cookout costs (Wednesday). Today I want to bring it to the shelf level: what is actually changing on your grocery store shelves right now, category by category, and what you can do about it.
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Something is happening at the grocery store right now, and most people are walking right past it. Not because they're not paying attention, but because the whole point is that you're not supposed to notice. That's important. Now, this whole week I've been telling you about the big picture focuses, you know, uh bearing down on fall grocery prices because I've been talking about that for a couple months now, because I think it's super important and I take it very seriously. I'm trying to get as many of you to pay attention as I can. You know, Monday we talked about, you know, fertilizer crisis and uh what disrupted the global supply chain and what that means for the the harvests coming up within the next few weeks. Now, Wednesday, we looked at the Farm Bureau's uh 4th of July cookout survey, which before this year I didn't even know existed, but they've been doing it for about 10 years now. Uh, it's the highest on record. Yes, the highest on record. And what those specific numbers tell us about where protein is headed and where your canned goods are headed, you know. So today I want to bring that down to shelf level though, because I noticed it at the grocery store, and I'm hoping that you will take the time to notice it also. Because while all of those structural forces are working their way through the system, doing their thing, coming down the pike, you know, something is already happening at your local grocery store right now, today, this week, this month, that most shoppers are walking past without even seeing. Packages are getting smaller, products are flat out disappearing, and manufacturers are betting that you are moving too fast through the aisle to check on the net weight. Yes, they are. So I want to slow you down a little bit today, kind of put the brakes on a little bit because it's super important to pay attention to this. I want to show you exactly what is happening category by category and what you can do about it before these changes compound the worse with the fall price pressures that are still on the way. Now, I want you to remember this is not a panic video, this is an information video because if you are informed, there's no room to panic. You can take the precautions necessary today. Let me show you how. Before I walk you through the specific categories, we're going to hit a few of them here. I want to explain uh the mechanism, you know, because once you understand why it's happening, it becomes much easier to spot. And that's key. When a food manufacturer faces rising input costs, because they all are one way or another, and right now, you know, they're facing it hard and from multiple directions, including steel and aluminum tariffs on packaging, ingredient cost increases, and transportation increases. They basically have three options that they can do. Option one is to just raise the price, put a higher number on the sticker. That is the most transparent option, the one that the customers notice immediately. You know, you automatically know, wait a minute, I did not pay that much for this last time or for the last three years, you know, because you buy it that often. So when there is any kind of price increase, it catches your attention, right? Option number two is to reformulate. This one scares the snout out of me, quite honestly, okay, because what they're doing is they're changing the recipes, and this is happening. Don't doubt it, this is happening. They use less of expensive ingredients and more of the cheaper one. They add water where there wasn't before, they substitute lower cost components. You know, the product looks the same on the outside because the packaging doesn't change and the cost stays the same. But what's inside the package, it's it's different. Now, option number three is to reduce the packaging size. It gives you less food for the same exact price. The package looks identical. I mean, if you're just you know scanning past it, it looks exactly the same. The logo's the same, the shelf price didn't change, you know, but the net weight printed, printed in small type on the bottom of the package, it quietly drops. They have no problem announcing it to the world when you know the amount goes up, but not when it drops. Now, options two and three, they they go by the same name. It's called shrinkflation. We've all heard about it. And a peer-reviewed study published in January of 2026 by economists at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that the average size package of food in U.S. grocery stores, now specifically US, okay, they declined by 14% between 2012 and 2019. 14% they took away for the same price. And the interesting part is that this, you know, hidden inflation, it added nearly four percentage points to measured food inflation over that period. The trend either continued or accelerated during the pandemic. And I know a lot of us really started paying hard attention during that time frame. We are now, however, in 2026. Okay, actually, we're halfway through it. With tariff costs on steel and aluminum packaging uh that were imposed over a year ago, they're finally reaching the end of their absorption period. As we said in Wednesday's video, um the baked beans of all things went up 13.8%. It wasn't the beans, my friends, it was the cans. Okay. Now, with that inflation point, you know, being reached, uh fertilizer-driven grain cost increases, for you know, filtering through all of your package goods, look at how much stuff you buy that has grain in it, right? And food manufacturers that, you know, were described in January as facing an uphill growth battle, they were left with little choice but to downsize, cut prices, or completely rethink their approach. Many of them, many of them chose downsizing. And it's visible in a lot of the categories that I'm going to walk you through right now. This is important because I'm not sure everybody knows it. Every single grocery store in America is required to show a unit price on the shelf tag. Okay? The price per ounce, the price per pound, the price per count, one of those unit prices or all will be on that shelf tag. It's usually printed in super small type in the corner of the tag under the large shelf price. So you're gonna need a magnifying glass or your phone with a zoom, you know. That number, it doesn't lie. That number doesn't lie. The shelf price can stay exactly the same while the product inside gets smaller. We've all seen it, we've all experienced it. But the unit price will actually go up. And so if you're tracking the unit prices, not just the cost, that makes a big difference because that always tells the truth. So start checking it. Start checking it. And if you do like grocery pickup or something, it shows it right on the website. On every canned good, on every pasta box, on every coffee bag, yeah, on every single jar of sauce, that number, that number is your protection against every shrinkflation tactic that manufacturers are using right now. That's how important tracking that is. And I'm going to show you category by category exactly which ones to check. Okay, we've talked about it a few times now. Canned goods are being squeezed from two directions at the same exact time right now. And I want to make sure that you understand both of them real quick, real quick synopsis. Okay. The first squeeze is the packaging cost because steel and aluminum, the material that your canned goods are literally, you know, comprised of, uh, saw tariffs imposed over a year ago. Food manufacturers absorbed those costs for months, absolute months, by simply using existing contracts or inventory to shield their customers from the full impact of it because that kind of shock hurts, you know, it hurts business. So that absorption period, though, that's that's ending. That's pretty much gone. Uh, the spins market research firm told Food Navigator USA in January that brands and retailers likely will need to raise prices in mid to late 2026. This is where we are today. Then there's the second squeeze because one's never enough, okay? The second squeeze is the product inside the can. So it's not just the container, it's the product inside of it. Researchers tracking shrinkflation in 2026 have documented that canned beans, canned soup, canned tomatoes are among the most active categories for quiet net weight reductions. Meaning, those are the ones that if you're buying now, you want to make sure to track that unit price. Okay, the can looks the same, the shelf price looks the same, but the drained weight, the actual food, is less than it was. Now, the soup example is one that is really worth paying attention to, okay. Popular soup brands have been quietly redesigning their aluminum cans to hold fewer ounces of product. It's just a design thing. You are paying the original retail price, but getting measurably less soup in every single can. For anybody that relies on commercially canned soup as a regular pantry staple or a quick meal, because they are for a lot of people. You know, most of us at some point or another use these things. That is a real cost increase, a real cost increase that does not show up as a price increase. So, what I want you to do before you leave this video, okay, the next time you're at the grocery store, I want you to pick up a can of, you know, your regular soup or beans or tomatoes and find the drained weight on the can. You'll probably need a magnifying glass or your phone to blow it up, okay? Then find a comparable can and compare. The unit price tag will show you if you are getting the same value that you always got. Now, I'm not saying don't go buy your canned goods. I'm telling you, go buy your canned goods now. You know, stock up for three months, four or six months, stock up for whatever you can and makes sense for you. The case for building your canned goods supply right now, before the terra flag completes, because it's it's just starting to show up, before further shrinkflation reduces what you get, is as strong as it has been in any point in recent years. You really need to be paying attention to this. Every commercially canned good that you put on your shelf today is priced before the full tariff impact reaches retail. So that's something to remember. Every can of tomatoes you put up yourself from this summer is priced at fresh tomato prices this season, not at the elevated fall commercial price because they're going to cost more in the fall. It's a given. The gap between what you pay now and what you will pay in October is real and it's growing. Category number two is pasta and bread. A lot of people eat pasta, a lot of people eat bread. Okay. Um, so I want you to pick up your pasta box the next time you're at the grocery store. The traditional one pound, check this out, because this one's snuck by me. The traditional one-pound box of dry pasta, 16 ounces, is increasingly difficult to find from the major national brands. 16 ounces. Tracking done uh by MousePrint and grocery industry analysts in 2026 has documented, documented, that the standard pasta box from multiple brands now comp now contains 12 to 14 ounces of pasta, not 16. So while we've always assumed that box had a pound of pasta because it has always had a pound of pasta, now it most likely has 12 to 14 ounces. The dimensions are the same, the box looks the same, the price might even be the same, even though I got a lot of people telling me that recently prices just went up about 25 cents a box. If your family recipe calls for a pound of pasta, and most pasta recipes do, you know, that's just they just automatically say a pound of pasta, you are now short of what you actually need for that recipe. So if you've been having trouble and your recipe hasn't been working out just right, guess why? That's why. You either adjust the recipe, buy a second box, or do not notice and just cook less food than you intended to. Every one of those outcomes affects you. Real simple for the why, because the why is important. Wheat prices. Okay, as I covered Monday, uh winter wheat is currently rated 44% very poor to poor. At farm level wheat prices are forecasted to increase 10.1% in 2026. Pasta manufacturers who locked in wheat contracts at last year's prices are now buying at higher prices. They've exhausted those contracts. The pasta box is where the cost increase is showing up, not as a higher price tag, but as less pasta inside. Bread, bread is doing the same exact thing. I don't know about you guys, but I have seen bread prices that are just ridiculous. And basically, you're getting, you know, like a chemical storm in there. Um, but yeah, commercially made bread, bread loaves from major national brands are being documented as physically shorter. So it's not just your mind playing tricks on you, okay? Also narrower and lighter than previous versions. The slices are cut thinner. I have noticed that. Uh, the total ounce count per bag is down. So the whole thing has changed, but it still looks the same. But it doesn't look the same when you bring it home, you know. Baking companies are fighting high wheat and transportation prices by altering the physical dimensions of their loaves while keeping the packaging and the price visually unchanged. Because I don't know how much more people can take of the price going up on the bread. I mean, it's it's going to eventually, but the prices for commercially made bread have gotten just crazy. You may have noticed your loaves of sandwich bread running out faster than they used to. It's not that you're eating more, most likely, you know. That's not your imagination. So don't think that it is. Now, what to do? Okay. On pasta, uh, when it comes to the pasta, buying in bulk is always better. When you find a full 16-ounce package that actually has 16 ounces in it, you know, or when store brands still carry full weight, that's great. Seal it in Mylar with an oxygen absorber for long-term storage. And at current prices and current net weights, locking in a pasta supply at the 16-ounce standard rather than you know the 12 to 14 ounce reduction. Uh, it's it's financially sensible because a lot of people eat a lot of pasta. On bread, this is the single strongest argument that I have for learning how to make your own, because it's not that hard, you guys. I'm going to put a link in the description box in the pinned comment for my basic bread recipe. Now, the recipe itself is going to say that it's a parmesan garlic bread. You just omit the Parmesan and the garlic if you don't want that, okay? It's a super simple basic bread recipe. So we we make it rather frequently when we have people over. I use that same recipe to make rolls for you know dinners. I'm going to use that same recipe to make hot dog buns. It's a very basic, simple, forgiving recipe. It's so forgiving, okay? So I will link that for you so that you can give it a try. It's commercially ground flour, so everyone can give it a try. Um, it's it's pennies on the dollar. Pennies on the dollar to make your own bread. Does it have to look like the stuff from the store? No, it does not. It does not. And I think that's what we need to learn to walk away from. You know, the cookie cutter look that everybody has. I tell you what, you take a sandwich to work on some homemade bread, and people are going to be like, what do you got there? Category number three, as you know, is one that's near and dear to my heart. It's coffee. Yeah. Coffee is one of the clearest and most documented examples of shrinkflation. Mm-hmm. Especially in 2026. And it is worth understanding because coffee is a it's a daily household staple in a lot of families. For decades, the standard bag of ground coffee, or whole bean coffee, even, was 16 ounces, one pound. Okay. Over the past few years, however, that standard has quietly shifted. And most of us didn't notice when it did. Many national brands now sell their standard bag in a 12-ounce or a 14-ounce size. The bags look the same, obviously. The price is higher or the same, most likely it's higher. But you're getting 12.5 to 25% less coffee in that container. The underlying driver to this is that coffee prices rose dramatically due to supply disruptions in Brazil and Vietnam, the world's two largest coffee producers, and those elevated prices have not fully retreated yet. Yeah. Manufacturers responded by reducing the weight of their bags rather than raising the prices because we're already going through some serious sticker shock on coffee prices. So instead of furthering that sticker shock, they just said, Oh, we're going to give you some for the same price, but it's going to be less. For a daily coffee drinker, a 14-ounce bag instead of a 16-ounce bag means that your coffee runs out 12.5% sooner. Over the course of a year, you are buying and paying for more bags than you did before for that same daily cup, or in my case, daily pot. The structural coffee supply situation has not resolved itself. Brazil and Vietnam are still the primary sources, and their harvest volatility has not stabilized. The USDA forecasts non-alcoholic beverages, which coffee drives that, okay, uh, to increase 5.2% in 2026 above the 20-year historical average. This is one of the categories that I would be building a buffer in right now if you're a coffee drinker. What do I do? I have typically no less than six months worth of coffee up on my shelf. Six months is a good number for me, you know. I really don't have freezer space for coffee, so that absolutely works. I do have some freeze-dried instant coffee. If things get desperate, I'm gonna have to get much better at making it. So I'm not sure I'm ever gonna be that desperate. But if it ever happens, they'll at least keep the caffeine headaches away, you know. The way to do this is to not be as brand loyal, and I'm not brand loyal, really. Um, somebody in our Facebook group saw a deal on Hills Brothers. I legit have not thought of Hills Brothers in decades. My parents used Hills Brothers, right? Um, and it was for a great price, which is now gone, uh, but it was for like $11. And I said, Oh my gosh, that's fantastic. So I I grabbed up five of them. I'm now wishing I had. Grabbed up 10 because when I ground that coffee, it was some of the best coffee I've had in a long time. So I have beans, I have pre-ground coffee, I have decaf coffee because this lady drinks a lot of coffee. Okay. But I'd have six months worth. And I've already figured out uh effective yesterday that we go through two to one decaf to regular because I'll start the day with regular, but as I move through the afternoon, it has to go to decaf because otherwise I'm up all night and I'm already sleep deprived. Buying three to six months ahead of today's prices, right, protect you from both further price increases and further rate reductions on the same bag. It's good to be in that position. Now the next category is cereals and breakfast foods. And I have a thought here, okay? Cereal is the category that has been shrink-flating, you know, the longest. Is that a word? Yeah. Um, and honestly, the most consistently. And it is still actively happening in 2026. Grocery industry trackers have consistently found that cereal manufacturers are among the most aggressive practitioners of package size reduction. The specific tactic that they use, the outer cardboard box stays the same height and the same width. It looks just as it did before, you know, sitting on the shelf, just as big in your pantry. The internal plastic bag that holds it, however, holds significantly fewer ounces of cereal than it previously did. The box is not full. It looks full. Uh, it is not. A family of four that used to get a week's worth of breakfast, you know, seven days of breakfast from one box, is now getting five or six days. Over the course of a year, they are buying more boxes at the same or higher price for the same number of breakfasts. The cost increase, it's basically invisible unless you check that net weight on the bottom corner of the box. Boxed mac and cheese, it is a staple for a lot of people, especially those with kids, has been documented as having nearly a full ounce removed per box in 2026. The portion yields slightly less food. For a family where mac and cheese is a regular weeknight meal because it is, okay, this means either smaller portions for everyone or buying a second box. Either way, the real cost per serving has increased. Now, in the breakfast food category, this one, I think we can get past this one if we try just a little bit, okay? Is we're making your own, it literally becomes both the cheapest and the most satisfying solution. So oatmeal, just hear me out, okay? Oatmeal, real oats, not the individual seasoned packets, you know, uh, is still priced honestly at the bulk weight. How's that for refreshing? Um, a canister of oats gives you the same breakfast for a fraction of the cost of boxed cereal. I talked about this specifically in a recent video. Pairing oatmeal with milk makes it a complete protein. Yeah, just like rice and beans, my friends, okay, and costs under 50 cents a serving. Now, if you want to take that up, if you want to notch it up, okay, how many of you love granola? Homemade granola is amazing. And if you have the ability, the ingenuity, or the thought to surf the internet, okay, there are a ton of different granola recipes out there that you can make yourself. Put some granola into a bowl and pour a little bit of milk over it, and you have a breakfast cereal that is not only better for the kiddos, um, it still catches their fancy, you know, because it still has that sweet, it still has that fruit, it still has all that good stuff. And you have just saved yourself a ton of money. Absolutely a ton of money. And you know what's in it. I love that. I love that for you, I love that for the kids. Now, category number five: cooking oils and pasta sauce. We're gonna clump them together this time. Now, cooking oils, particularly olive oil and avocado oil, are under two separate pressures at once, supply side problems from Mediterranean harvest failures and tariff-related import increases. Um, olive oil has been one of the most expensive and volatile uh grocery categories for over two years. Manufacturers have responded with what industry watchers describe as classic shrinkflation tactic, the bottle redesign. A standard bottle gets, you know, sleeker in shape. No, it didn't lose weight, silly. Okay. Tapered center, distinctive curve, isn't that sexy? Uh yeah, often described as premium or artisanal in appearance. Mm-hmm. The new bottle holds four to eight fewer fluid ounces than the old one. The price stays the same or increases slightly because olive oil's been increasing. Uh, the bottle looks so nice, it's so slim, it's so sexy, it's so ergodynamic, right? Yeah, no. Uh yeah, you get less oil. That's the end product. Now that same that same tactic is being applied to sports drinks and hydration beverages. You know, the classic 32-ounce plastic bottle has been widely replaced by the 28-ounce. That redesign makes it harder to spot the reduction unless you're paying attention. Now, pasta sauce is a particularly important example for this community. Pasta sauce jars from major brands have been documented as quietly holding less volume than previous versions. For anyone that uses a jar of pasta sauce uh per meal, this matters. This is gonna throw off your recipes, my friends, okay? That jar previously did a whole meal. Now it requires either less of the rest of the ingredients or more of the sauce. If you're gonna get it right, you know, the way that you used to, before everything started going wonky. What can you do about the cooking oil? I've covered this quite a bit too, but when you find prices that work for you, okay, buy enough for several months. Do not go crazy with it, do not go over a year. Refined coconut oil, avocado oil, and olive oil all store well for a year or slightly more in a cool, dark place. The supply disruptions affecting these categories, yeah, they're structural. They're structural. It's it's nothing else. So it's gonna take multiple seasons, multiple seasons to come out of it. You know, if they can, if they can get back to the normal, we're never seeing normal again. I don't know how many times I can say that. Um, this is not something that resolves quickly, so don't expect it to. Buying a supply at current prices is sensible preparation, it's not panic. And don't think that you have to buy five years worth. That is ridiculous. Nobody has room for that. Just get six months to a year's worth and start learning to adapt. Now, one that I have not experienced because it's not something that we consume, okay? But snacks and chips. So if you consume them, let me know in the comment section if you've been finding this. Um, the bag of air that used to be a bag of chips. I have always known a bag of chips to be a bag of air that happened to have some chips in it. But PepsiCo, which owns Frito Lay, the largest snack manufacturer in the United States, announced at the end of 2025 that it would reduce 20% of its production in 2026, closing three manufacturing plants. They did not specify which products would be discontinued, but Doritos Dynamita Dynamita? I don't know, and Hot Cheetos Popcorn uh has already disappeared from the shelves in 2025. I didn't know they existed, maybe that's why. And more Frito Lay varieties are expected to flow the same way. Separately, snack bags across the industry have been documented as holding fewer ounces of product while remaining the same size bag and the same price. So you're getting less product and even more air in the bag. For preparedness purposes, you know, the snack category matters less than any category out there. Absolutely. Okay. Uh staples are where it's important, but if you have a household that does all, you know, snacks, then you'll notice this. Nobody is building a 90-day snack supply. God, I hope not. There are so many other things to blow your money on, okay? But it is the canary in the coal mine, if you want to look at it, the category that is most aggressively shrink flating. I'm gonna stick with that word right now, uh, predicts what is coming for the less flashy categories that actually feed your family. More importantly, when snack food costs go up, many families shift their spending from snacks to staples. They just stop buying them, period. Which increases demand on the staple categories pasta, rice, canned goods, bread, precisely at the moment when these categories are also under cost pressure. Everything compounds, everything, even the potato chips. Now there's the reformulation problem. Did you know that we have a reformulation problem? We do when the product that disappears is replaced by something that is not quite the same. Now, at the grocery store, my product flat out disappeared. It has literally been there for years. It is the only place that I buy it. It is no longer available in any way, shape, form, or size. There's not even a slot on the shelf for it anymore. I tore up that shelf looking for them. Okay. They just go away. Everything is being reformatted. So I'm going to spend uh a few minutes on reformulation because it's the hardest version of the problem to detect and one that has the most direct implications for your pantry. So if it doesn't just completely go away, then what happens is it provides you with a similar product or what looks like the same product, but it is not the same product. Shrinkflation gives you less of the same product. Reformulation gives you the same amount of a different product. Different. And in April 2026, with commodity prices uh elevated across cocoa and coffee and sugar and cooking oils, uh reformulation is accelerating a lot. Somebody brought one of these up to me recently that I had not been aware of. Uh so I rely on you guys. If you notice this, then definitely throw in the comment section. Um, coffee brands are reducing the weight of their bags, but some brands are also shifting their blend ratios. So if you have an old container, keep it and compare the notes, okay? Using cheaper bean varieties and using less of the uh premium origin beans that define the blend, the bag still says the same name because they can get away with that. The taste is slightly different if you're sensitive to it. Your per cup cost, no matter what, has still gone up. Chocolate is a documented case of this. And I know we've got some chocolate lovers here, okay? UK brands, Penguin and Club, owned by McVitie's, let me know if I'm pronouncing that right, uh, reduced cocoa content and substituted palm oil and shea oil to the point that they could no longer legally call themselves chocolate under UK food labeling rules. That's how much they had to change it. The global cocoa shortage driving this decision, because it is, it's it's an issue, is the same shortage affecting U.S. candy manufacturers. Chocolate bars in U.S. grocery stores are being documented as noticeably thinner and shorter than previous versions of it, with some manufacturers literally rounding the corners of the molds to reduce the weight. Do what you gotta do, right? Pasta sauce is being reformulated in some cases, less tomato, more water, and starch, uh, cheaper ingredient profiles that maintain the visual appearance of the sauce while reducing ingredient cost. The jar looks the same, but the sauce is actually pretty different. For pantry preparedness, the reformulation trend has specific implications. Very much. The canned and jarred products that you put up yourself from fresh ingredients are not subject to reformulation. No, they're not. A jar of your home-canned crushed tomatoes is exactly what you put into it. A jar of commercial pasta sauce in 2026 may not be what was in it in 2022. Home preservation locks in quality as well as price, my friends. Everything that I have been describing today, all of it, the smaller cans, the reformulation of sauces, the shrinking of pasta boxes, right, has a simple antidote. When you put your own food up, when you make your own food, you control what goes into the jar and how much of it. You do not get reformulated sauce. That just kind of gives me the okay. You do not get the smaller weight, you know exactly what's in that jar. I use four jars canning lids for my canning period. They're the only lids that I use. I have for years, ever since 2020, they were there for us when the standard company said, screw you, we don't care. Okay. They were there with the right price point with the great quality. Failure rates are minimal, so minimal that it's crazy. Most of the time it's my fault if it fails. So, across hundreds of canning sessions, um, they have given me consistently high seal rates. I cannot recommend these strongly enough. And I trust them with my summer produce, with my hard work. I am spending an extraordinary amount of time sweating my butt off in the garden, yanking weeds, babying plants, trying to make sure that I get the harvest that I planted so that I have good quality food that doesn't have a whole bunch of questionable stuff in it, you know. The last thing that I want to do is risk it with cheap, nasty lids that don't work. These work and they work very well. They are what I am using to put up my summer harvest. And hopefully, here within the next few weeks, I will be inundated with a whole bunch of uh summer harvest to put up. Right now in July, this is your peak window for canning tomatoes, for canning peppers, green beans, any fresh produce. Check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation to see what you can can and how to can it properly because we don't can cheesecake here. We're not stupid. Okay. Um, the pricing on fresh summer produce that you can go and get, you know, by the bushel or whatever, is at its lowest. It will be for the next 12 months. So if you're not growing it yourself, you can find someplace to purchase it. The link is in the description box and the pinned comment below. If you use the code SUTTENS10, you get 10% off. And they have pressure canners. It's the only pressure canner I use anymore. I want to close with something practical because I try to make sure that you hit, you know, you get something out of this, okay? Here's exactly what I want you to do the next time you go to the grocery store. And because most people grocery shop on the weekends, you can do it this weekend while you're still thinking about it, okay? For every category that I described today: canned goods, pasta, coffee, cereal, cooking oil, sauce. Find the unit price on the shelf tag. Price per ounce, price per count. That number tells you the truth that the shelf price hides. Period. Compare it across different brands. That's going to be your tell right there. Compare the store brand to the national brand. The unit price will almost always tell you where the best value actually is. Now flip the package over, okay? Net weight is printed on every single package, usually on the bottom or the back in small type. The weight of the pasta box you have been buying for years, literal years, may have changed. Look to see if it's 16 ounce or if it's less. The drained weight on your canned beans may have changed. The fluid ounces in your pasta sauce might have changed too. Check it. You have nothing to lose and your grocery budget to gain. Store brands are almost universally a better value right now than national brands experiencing shrinkflation. And as most of you might know, um the same product is going into both of them a lot of times. A lot of times you're getting the same exact ketchup, the same exact mustard, the same exact whatever, okay, um, as the national brands in your store brand. It's it's amazing. And I mean, I can remember back in the day. Do you remember when store brands first came out? They were the black and white, you know, all black print with white labels. They were so noticeable. People took it as uh something to be ashamed of. Do not, do not be ashamed of saving your family money and preparing for the future. There is no pantry shame going on here, okay? Do what you have to do to get food into your house to make sure that your household is fed. Now, for the categories where the reformulation is most active, the pasta sauce, the condiments, the baked goods, the coffee blends, you know, making your own that eliminates the variable entirely. It just gone. Um, I do have a playlist, uh a DIY kitchen or something to that effect. I'll link it down below. Anyway, of different things that you can make yourself instead of buying them. I mean, there's a certain soup brand out there that has a dry onion soup mix blend. You can replicate that in a heartbeat, okay, for pennies on the dollar. You get so much more, so much more. So there's a bunch of different ones in that playlist, and there will be more coming up because we are going to be focusing on all the ways that we can save you money using what's in your pantry instead of giving it to the corporations. So let me bring this together this week, real quick. These videos are never real quick anymore. Monday, the fertilizer crisis is a structural supply shock that will reduce fall crop yields and tighten food availability at the back half of 2026. We are in the back half of 2026. Wednesday, we talked about the Farm Bureau's Fourth of July cookout survey. It hit its highest cost on record. Baked beans went up 13.2%, 13.8%, one of those two, with the specific category showing beef at all-time highs, okay, and canned goods beginning to show the tariff lag. It's showing up. You there's there's no denying it. I'm sure somebody will try. Today, at the grocery store level, the manufacturers are already responding to these cost pressures with shrinkflation. They're doing it more, they're doing it more sneakily. That's another word I'm not sure about. Anyway. Smaller packages at the same price, and reformulation, which is one that a lot of people don't know about. Okay. Different ingredients inside familiar packaging, less ingredients inside of familiar packaging. Both are happening right now, this month, today, across goods, pasta, bread, coffee, cereal, cooking oils, and pasta sauce. It's hitting everybody. Okay. The practical response is exactly what we have been building towards all week long. Summer produce preservation while fresh food is at its peak. Availability and price. That's what we should be doing. Bulk grain purchases sealed in mylar. Okay. Learn how to mill your flour. Learn how to make your own flour. If you are buying commercially ground flour, fine, that's great. Just don't stock 10 years worth because it's only good for a year or two. What do you need for it? An airtight container. That's what you need. Okay. And use it. Don't sit there and stare at it. Now, protein strategy is still super important and in my mind, one of the top things. Okay, but it's also unfortunately one of the most expensive things. So while prices are where they are, there's nothing we can do about that. Can goods purchased at pre-tariff lag pricing before the full impact hits the shelves is important. That's your tuna, that's your salmon, that's your keystone, that's all of that stuff. Okay. And the smartest tool in your grocery store, the smartest tool, the unit price tag. Start tracking it. Start a price book. Start tracking it. It never lies. It can't. It has to tell you the truth. It always shows you exactly what is happening if you'll take the time to notice. I made this video because I think that you deserve to know. I think that you should know how it's being impacted, why your recipes are not working, why it's taking you twice as much to make the same amount. Okay. I think that it's important that you know and that we're out here letting people know what these companies are doing to us because we're paying them or not. It's our choice. Also, because this way you can act without panic. We don't do panic here. We do informed decision making. We have an unprecedented window of opportunity, but that window will close when fall begins, okay? If it's starting to close already. So by the time fall gets here, it's just going to get to the point where it's closed. And then we'll just be paying the higher prices. It's not that you have to stock up a year's worth of food. Just stock up a few weeks or a few months extra so that you have that buffer for when things get tighter because they will, so that you will always be eating at cheaper prices than what everyone around you is eating at. Now, if you want to keep going on with any of this, visit one of these two videos or both even and check them out. Check out the links in the description box down below and the pinned comment. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. I am here happy to help you. I want to help you be as secure as you can as we move into the difficult times that are coming. Until next time, everybody, be safe. Keep stacking it to the rafters, my friends.