Lebanon’s economic collapse has slowly reshaped everyday life, but nowhere has the crisis felt more personal than in the price of food. For years, Lebanese households lived with relatively stable costs, where a grocery list looked more or less the same from one month to the next. But as the currency began losing value, that balance shattered, and the cost of essential goods started rising in ways no one could ignore.

To understand just how severe this shift was, I looked at the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from 2000 to 2024 – specifically comparing Food CPI with the General CPI. The visualization embedded below helps reveal the full story behind the surge.

For almost two decades, both lines lie nearly flat. Prices were predictable. Inflation existed, but it was slow and manageable. Then, around 2019-2020, everything changed. As the Lebanese pound depreciated, overall inflation began climbing steadily. But food prices did not simply follow that upward trend – they broke away entirely and started rising at a much steeper, more dramatic rate.

In the highlighted portion of the visualization, the gap between the two lines grows quickly and aggressively. General CPI increases significantly, but Food CPI skyrockets. This divergence reflects more than numbers: it captures the moment when essential goods became unaffordable for many families. Imported food items, already sensitive to exchange-rate fluctuations, adjusted more slowly at first and then surged as sellers fully priced goods in dollars. What used to be routine purchases suddenly became financial shocks, forcing households to change diets, reduce quantities, or shift to cheaper alternatives.

This widening gap explains why the crisis is felt most intensely in the supermarket aisle. Food, being a daily necessity, exposes the full weight of inflation in a way other categories cannot. The data reveals that while inflation affected every part of life, it was food prices that redefined the crisis for Lebanese people.

Understanding this pattern is crucial because it highlights where intervention is most needed. Transparent pricing, stable exchange rate mechanisms, and stronger support for local production can reduce vulnerability to future shocks. The visualization makes one thing clear: when food prices rise much faster than everything else, the impact is immediate, widespread, and deeply human.

Lebanon’s inflation story is still unfolding, but recognizing how and why food prices broke away from the general trend is an important step toward rebuilding stability. The gap in the chart is more than a statistical difference – it represents the lived reality of households trying to keep up with a crisis that reshaped even the most basic necessities.