Wondering how we got our prices? We contacted a group of friends and colleagues around the world to report on prices in their local supermarket. Where we couldn't find responsive acquaintances, we shopped online. We converted to pounds and quarts from metric units (except for some items, such as Coca-Cola, already in liters, or a dozen eggs or a loaf of bread, for instance). Then we translated from local currency to U.S. dollars, using the current price as of July 29, 2008.

In order to get our baskets to be even (lemons to lemons, if you will), in cases where our shoppers were unable to find prices for an item we filled in the average worldwide price to obtain the "index" price. This is the list we gave our shoppers:

• half-gallon whole milk
• 1 lb ground beef
  
• 12 oz box of Cheerios or local brand-name equivalent
• gallon of regular gas
• 1 lb dry pasta
• 1 lb bananas
  
• 1 lb baking potatoes
• 1 lb coffee beans
• 1 lb white rice
  
• loaf of white bread
  
• dozen eggs
• 2 liter Coca-Cola or other soda
  
• liter of maple syrup
  
• pound price for whole chicken
  
• 1 head of leaf lettuce
  
• 1 pint seasonal fruit, preferably farmer's market
  
• 1 lb tofu
  
• 1 lemon
  
• 1 bunch basil
  
• 1 (3 oz) organic chocolate bar
  

Below you'll find notes and explanations from some of our food surveyors worldwide.

Johannesburg, South Africa -- $75.16
Pick n' Pay

In Johannesburg, despite its proximity to many of the world's finest coffee-growing regions in Northern Africa, coffee is among the most expensive in the world, around $14.30 a pound.

London, England -- $79.08
Waitrose

In London, coffee is by far the most expensive; $18.26 a pound. On the other hand, maple syrup is a relatively inexpensive $6.56 per liter, and white bread was only $0.74 for a loaf.

Adelaide, Australia -- $74.82
Coles

Our shopper, Jessica, reported that maple syrup isn't sold in litres in Australia, but grams. She was also wowed by paying close attention to individual prices and discovering that, for instance, white rice is comparably cheap in Australia (67 cents a pound) whereas basil ($3.12 a bunch) and white bread ($4.22 a loaf) are among the most expensive in the world.

Little Rock, Arkansas -- $42.69

Alisha, who shops for her husband and baby, reported that she doesn't drink milk but expects to be adding that to her baby's diet soon; so she was interested to see that her basket of groceries was so inexpensive. She said she wasn't able to find organic chocolate at her local supermarket. Her price for a dozen eggs -- $1.00! -- is testament to the fact that Arkansas is the chicken capital of the U.S.

Newmarket, Ontario, Canada -- $67.61

Canadians have pricey groceries in comparison to many places in the U.S., but they save money on coffee -- it's only $5.99 per pound compared to a $7.11 worldwide average. Amazingly, maple syrup was more expensive in Ontario than it is in Los Angeles, where the grocery stores are much farther away from maple syrup country.

Bangalore, India -- $31.93

Our Bangalore basket turned out to be the cheapest of all, although according to Moupiya, neither dry pasta or maple syrup are readily available in India. For a couple of products, Piya quoted prices for both high quality and low quality groceries, and the difference was pretty astounding; coffee was 42 cents a pound for the cheap stuff and $1.05 per pound for better coffee (still the cheapest in the world, mind you). White rice was 11 cents for low quality and 25 cents for high quality.

Los Angeles, California -- $77.74
Ralph's

In the city of angels, eating is a pricey affair. Ground beef registered at $5.29 a pound -- the highest price in the U.S. and one of the highest worldwide. Bananas, at $1.60 a pound, were positively European in cost. A dozen eggs? $5.99. But Coca-Cola is a bargain: $1.00 for two liters.

Portland, Oregon -- $63.85
Safeway

I shopped at Safeway, though I'm a committed "locavore" and typically get most of my produce from the farmer's market. I'm used to paying more for my produce from the little farmers; they just can't do loss leaders when they only sell a dozen types of veggies. Surprisingly, though, I found that basil was cheaper and more bountiful at the farmer's market ($2.00 for a giant-sized bunch vs. $2.29 for a little plastic package at Safeway), and raspberries were about the same price ($3.00 per pint) though the Safeway version was far less appealing and fresh.

Hong Kong -- $56.89
Taipei, Taiwan -- $59.29

Our Chinese-language bloggers from Engadget China gathered prices for us from Hong Kong and Taipei, where we were interested to see that ground beef was enormously expensive ($11.30 a pound in Taipei) and packaged cereal was extremely cheap (80 cents for a box of Corn Flakes). Gas is very pricey on the island of Hong Kong, $8.30 a gallon, while Coca-Cola is cheap everywhere (around $1.50).

Frankfort, Germany -- $61.08
Esbe Market

I don't know what rice I expected Germans might eat, but I didn't think it would be Uncle Ben's. It is! And it's not cheap; a 1kg box is €3.49, or $2.49 per pound. Kayt also reported that "they didn't have a whole chicken at the store (you usually go to the Metzgerai for that) but chicken breasts were €8.40 per kg, one of our highest prices in the world as a result. Kayt also shopped the farmer's market for us in Frankfort, where fresh strawberries were €2.99 for 500g, or about $2.00 per pint. A bargain!

Madrid, Spain -- $71.81
El Corte Ingles

Madrid and Los Angeles were eerily similar in prices, with milk, ground beef, bananas and chicken within a few quarters of each other. Madrid residents don't, it appears, eat Cheerios (we found Corn Flakes for about $2.92 per box) and the rice was the most expensive in the world at $3.57 per pound.

Paris, France -- $105.28
Carrefours

When I was a senior in college, I spent a few days in Paris and got up early one morning to shop a street market. I remember not being able to afford very much. I still wouldn't be able to afford to shop in Paris, even though I'm now not a starving student; it's the most expensive food basket in WalletPop's World Food Price Index. White bread ($3.07), tofu ($10.00 per pound) and maple syrup (a whopping $28.33 per liter) were particularly pricey.

Brussels, Belgium -- $87.82

Gaby shopped both at a supermarket and at her neighborhood grocery market and had all kinds of interesting notes in her report, such as this one about ground beef; it was "2.25 Euros ("carbonnade" cut at cheap butcher's shop) or 4.45 ("steak tatare cut" at normal or quality butcher's shop)." As for potatoes, she made a distinction: "0.50 Euro/500 gm (new potatoes); old potatoes are 0.30 Euro/kg." Old potatoes! I love that. As for fruit, she said, "1.50 and 2 Euros for a 500-gm tub of currants and strawberries, respectively. Raspberries are 2-3 Euros for half that; cultivated blueberries are 2.50 Euros for a 500-gm tub." It's interesting that, in America, the distinction is made with wild blueberries, but cultivated blueberries are just "blueberries."

Kuwait City -- $55.43
Yaw9eel.com

In Kuwait, we expected the gas to be cheap, and it was -- the price came out to an almost insane $0.78 per gallon. But what really blew us away was the coffee: 27 cents a pound! Now that's black gold. An interesting tidbit: In Kuwait City, eggs are sold by the basket of 30, instead of by the dozen.

Moscow, Russia -- $69.11
Ramstore

Who would have thought that potatoes would be $4.45 per pound in Russia -- one of the highest worldwide prices? Gas, however, is a veritable steal at $2.10 per gallon.

Brazil -- $34.19

Coffee was also cheap in Brazil thanks to its proximity to so many equatorial coffee growers; $2.10 per pound. Lemons, at six cents apiece, must have been in season. Bananas, too, are local in Brazil and only 25 cents per pound. All this seems fitting for a tropical nation. But the biggest surprise was maple syrup, $1.65 per liter.

How much does ground beef cost in your supermarket? In my local Safeway, it's $3.49 a pound, but at the specialty market where I shop to get beef that was raised by local farmers and grass-fed, it's $3.99 a pound; a fair price, I think, though my grocery budget is seriously straining my family's finances. In Little Rock, Arkansas, where a few of my blogging mama friends shop, ground beef is only $3.10 per pound, and the sample grocery basket of 20 items we created at WalletPop costs only $39.72; it's $63.85 in Portland, Oregon, where I live.

But what about my friends in Adelaide, Australia? London, England? Brussels, Belgium? In Adelaide, Jessica shopped at Coles and found that "4 Star Choice" (lean but not extra lean) was AUD6.54 per 500g -- or $5.75 per pound. In London, Catherine shopped at Waitrose and found ground beef priced at £4.99 per 500g -- a whopping $9.03 per pound, the second most expensive of all the cities where we shopped (the priciest was Paris, where ground beef is $11.03 per pound). In Brussels, Gaby reported ground beef to be €2.25 per pound ("carbonnade" cut at cheap butcher's shop) or €4.45 per pound ("steak tatare cut" at normal or quality butcher's shop) -- $3.54 per pound, nearly the same as here in Portland.

I was at the grocery store, and I was shocked. My family had been going through a lot of maple syrup (I've cut out sugar from our diet recently), and I was used to paying $8.99 for a big 750 ml container. Here it was only a few weeks later, and the Trader Joe's price had shot up to $13.99! It was far higher at the other grocery stores; I recorded a price of $18.49 at Safeway in Portland, Oregon.

I started wondering, what are prices for maple syrup like over the rest of the world? And how about eggs? In an environment where economists and political leaders are commiserating with us about the high cost of groceries, we at WalletPop felt it would be illuminating to track a basket of groceries worldwide. We'll give you an index price and revisit it weekly, with prices from a wide number of international cities. So next time you pick up a pound of pasta, you can feel good because you know it's far dearer in Taipei.

In order to calculate the World Food Price Index, we take the price (converted to USD and to a common weight or measure, where applicable) of each item and total the basket. Where items aren't available or a price hasn't been gathered, our index registers the average price of the other cities so each basket of groceries will "weigh" the same. Then we average the six cities to get an index price.

Our process isn't scientific, and our cities will change from week to week, so this shouldn't be used for advanced economic analysis. It should prove interesting, though; it turns out that maple syrup is slightly pricier in Canada. Who would have thought? And our weighted-average basket of groceries, our WalletPop World Food Price Index, is $69.84 this week. How does your town compare?

In the blistering summer heat, everyone enjoys watermelon. It was a staple during my childhood and it is one of the most fun fruits for kids to eat. Watermelon is huge, drips everywhere and you can have seed spitting contests. What's more fun for a kid than making a mess? However, if watermelon was expensive, I would have certainly grown up making a mess with other fruits.

Recently a Densuke watermelon fetched $6,100 at an auction in Japan. This is one of the most expensive melons ever sold in Japan, and I would have to imagine the rest of the world as well. At 17 pounds the cost of the fruit was about $359 per pound. I think that's more than I would fetch at an auction. For comparison, it's equivalent to 122 pounds of Godiva Dark Chocolate Truffles. This price isn't even much of a shocker for Japan where a pair of cantaloupe melons sold for $23,500 last month.

Sales of Spam are up as the inexpensive "meat product" is looking good to shoppers on a budget. It's easy to make fun of Spam. After all, it's meat that comes in a can. A can! And it's always had a reputation for being a low-end meal item. But I have fond memories of eating Spam as a kid, and we never turned our noses up at it.

With food costs on the rise, shoppers are buying more Spam in the recent months. Industry experts say the reason is simple: Spam and low-cost lunch meats are being eaten a couple of times a week instead of more expensive meat products in an effort to save money on the grocery bill.

U.S. food prices rose 4% last year and are on pace to rise 6% this year. And while the price of Spam is up 7% in the last year, it's still a cheaper alternative than many other meats. And because the canned meat keeps well in the cupboard, it's also convenient.

Spam's been around since 1937, and it looks to be going strong. Maybe now is the time for you to invest in a Spam cookbook? After all... if more households are going to be buying Spam for at least the near future, it might be worthwhile to get creative with this "other" meat.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

It's no secret that food prices are rising, but if you're curious as to how much the prices are climbing, the Department of Labor recently released its Consumer Price Index Survey, which tells you how much things have changed in the last month.

You can look it up at the Department of Labor, but so you don't have to, here's how things break down:

Cereal and bakery products: prices increased 1.3% in March for baked goods from the month before; bread increased 2.1%. That may not sound too terrible, but bread is 14.7% more costly than it was a year ago.

Recently, as I was trying to figure out ways to spend less money on groceries, I had a big "well, duh!" moment. Wandering through my local grocery store, I realized that, the more work that the food companies and store had to put into my food, the more money I had to pay. I realized that, by buying foods that were convenient for the store and doing more of my own food-prep work, I could save a large percentage of my weekly food bill. These changes individually amounted to a few cents here and there, but they quickly added up.

Fresh Food

One of the first things that I discovered is that fresh produce is really expensive. The reason is obvious: fruits and vegetable require special packaging, considerable amounts of shelf space, and a lot of TLC. Once the food gets to the store, a significant amount will have to be thrown away because it has gone bad or has been damaged in transit. When it's finally put on the shelf, it only has a limited time before it starts to rot and has to be weeded out. This means that, not only does it require special equipment and a lot of space, but it also requires trained laborers to care for it. All of that expense gets factored in to the price of the food.

Whether you prefer organic milk or orange juice for breakfast; whether coffee or cola gets you caffeinated; whether it's beef or chicken that's for dinner, you're paying more for it this month than ever before. Our friends at AOL Money & Finance took a look at a group of groceries on many people's shopping list and compared the average U.S. prices in December 2006 to the prices in December 2007. What we weren't surprised about: all these prices are higher this year than last. What we were surprised about: some of the increases are truly monumental.

You can browse through our gallery to see the ones we thought would impact us the most, and what were the highest increases -- over 30% in two cases! But I was amazed at how universal the increases were. While lemons don't make up a big portion of my grocery budget, it's shocking to see that the prices are up 23.2%. And sweet peppers, a staple in many Tex-Mex and Cajun dishes, are up 15.7%. The aforementioned orange juice, part of that complete breakfast the cereal makers are always advertising? Up 13.3%.