The truth about Easter food prices
Last Saturday I spent a few hours at Athens’s Varvakeios meat and vegetable market – not to shop but to compare what I saw with what what I had seen and heard on television news bulletins. While I was there, I saw a TV crew approaching elderly shoppers – particularly those who appeared the least well off – to record their views about the prices and quality on offer at the market. There were plenty of other elderly shoppers there who were obviously better off, but they were of no interest to the TV crew. As for the food products, they were most impressive: a wide variety of goods in great abundance, all types and grades of meats, cold cuts from Greece and abroad, fish of all sizes, shrimps, lobsters and other seafood. The grocery section was a rich and refreshing garden of color and there was a vast array of cheese. In short, the Varvakeios is a microcosm of globalization, which we may not contribute to so much as producers but certainly as consumers. The spread was truly multinational: fish from Morocco and Oman, lemons from Israel, cold cuts from Hungary and Easter lamb from China. There was a similar variety in prices. Most lambs were being sold for between 6 and 7 euros with sucklings going for around 10 euros. This seems reasonable, especially when some neighborhood butchers sell them for double the price. The insistence of TV channels on repeating the same feature on «rising Easter prices» every year is getting a bit boring. Although it is true that prices go up each year, in accordance with inflation, what really affects the Easter budgets of Greek households is the increasing tendency to overspend and borrow to cover it.
