# U.S. food prices: at home and away from home

Meplar download package, version 1
Chart page: https://meplar.com/insights/us-food-prices/
Download directory: https://meplar.com/downloads/us-food-prices/v1/

The chart compares BLS Consumer Price Index category price indexes for food at
home (CUUR0000SAF11) and food away from home (CUUR0000SEFV). Both are U.S. city
average CPI-U, not seasonally adjusted, originally 1982–84 = 100. Each series is
rebased separately to September 2019 = 100.

There are 85 monthly slots from September 2019 through September 2026: 170
extracted source rows, 168 observed values and two missing values. October 2025
is missing for both series, marked X in the frozen BLS files. Monthly CSV cells
are empty and chart lines break at that month. There is no interpolation or
carry-forward. Annual-average M13 rows are excluded.

Source release: 14 October 2026 (September 2026 CPI). Frozen source capture:
18 October 2026 UTC. These are BLS release and retrieval dates, not a Meplar
publication date. SOURCE_PROVENANCE.json records the exact public URLs,
retrieval timestamps, response headers, byte lengths and SHA-256 hashes.
Stable BLS release reference:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_10142026.htm

## Files

- chart.svg / chart.png: accepted desktop artwork; SVG 1200×920, PNG 1800×1380.
- chart_mobile.svg / chart_mobile.png: accepted mobile artwork, both 360×950.
- monthly.csv: original CPI levels and rebased levels, one row per month.
- source-extract.csv: the exact selected source records, including missing '-'.
- period-changes.csv: cumulative changes over the explicit three-, four- and
  seven-year windows. Values use source CPI, rounded to one decimal, half up.
- metadata.json: series definitions, methods, caveats and versioned file URLs.
- SOURCE_PROVENANCE.json: unmodified frozen public-source capture record.
- SOURCE_TERMS.txt: source terms, attribution and artwork distinction.
- reproduce.py: offline standard-library CSV reproduction and artwork checks.
- source-and-data.zip: this bundle plus all four frozen raw BLS capture files.
- SHA256SUMS.txt: SHA-256 checksums of sibling files (excluding itself).

## Reproduce offline

Extract source-and-data.zip into a new directory. Its raw/ directory contains
the four frozen captures. From that extracted directory, run Python 3:

    python3 reproduce.py --verify-only
    python3 reproduce.py --output ../rebuilt-food-csv

The output directory must not already exist. The script checks all four source
hashes, series definitions, source release text, missing-data footnotes, all
three packaged CSV hashes, four accepted artwork hashes, PNG dimensions, and
all 336 source-matched SVG vertices and explicit missing-month gaps. It then
rebuilds the exact three CSV byte streams from frozen raw data; --output writes
those CSVs. No network access or third-party Python package is used.

The SVGs and PNGs are frozen accepted exports. This bundle verifies their bytes
and SVG geometry; it does not recreate the full visual design or re-render PNG
pixels. Hashes verify integrity, not authorship or an external signature.

## Interpretation

Rebased level = 100 × CPI(month) / CPI(September 2019).
Cumulative change = 100 × (CPI(end) / CPI(start) − 1).
Rebased CSV levels have nine decimals; changes use unrounded source levels.
The September 2019–September 2022 and September 2022–September 2026 windows
have different lengths (three and four years). Their changes are not annualized.
These are category price indexes, not dollar meal costs or household
affordability measures. Food away from home is broader than restaurants:
it includes takeout, school and workplace meals, vending, mobile vendors and
catering. This comparison does not establish what caused price changes.

Attribution: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (source data); Meplar (chart).
No BLS emblem is used. See SOURCE_TERMS.txt before reuse.