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?

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.