According to a new price comparison tool released by the UK's statistics office on Wednesday, cucumbers, olive oil, and cheese topped Britain's inflation chart in March. The price of a cucumber
was up 52% in the 12 months to March, with an average of 84 pence ($1.05) each, while olive oil rose by 49%. Hard cheese, which includes Swiss cheeses like emmental and gruyere, rose by 44%, and cheddar increased by 42% at £9.29 per kilo.
The cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks rose by an annual 19.1%, the highest since 1977, despite the average inflation rate across goods and services declining. The price increases were due to higher energy prices, which raised agricultural production costs, and poor weather in important sources of salad crops like Spain and Morocco. Photo by J Taylor, Wikimedia commons.