HIGH FOOD PRICES: Reader Robert Denton notes this post and this one, and suggests that I’m wrong to think that food prices aren’t really up.

Well, I don’t think that food prices aren’t up. I do the grocery shopping for my household, and believe me, I’ve noticed; my average grocery run costs about 20 bucks more than last year. Rather, my point was the lameness of media efforts to report on that — interviewing people at fancy gourmet markets? — and the cheesiness of their “holiday” angle. As is often the case, even as they try hard to manufacture one bit of bad news, they’re actually missing the real bad news, because reporting on that usefully would require actual work. As I’ve noted on this topic before, their bias is exceeded only by their laziness and ignorance. The data in the AP story don’t prove its ostensible point — that holiday barbecues (by which they mean cookouts, not actual barbecue) are vastly more expensive — but to do an actual story on what food prices are up across the board, and why, would be actual work and wouldn’t produce the “holiday angle” that editors want.

UPDATE: Related item here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Steven Malanga at RealClearMarkets. (Thanks to reader Tom Scott for the tip).