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People call out Sobeys for ridiculous prices after another expensive find at Ontario store

People in and around Toronto are finding it overwhelmingly difficult to stay in a decent mood after a visit to any given grocery store lately, as food prices continue to reach new levels of unaffordable along with everything else in the city.

One customer stoked the ever-bubbling collective anger on the subject this weekend after finding (and posting about) an item at his local Sobeys that he found to be exorbitantly priced, adding to a long list of similar stories in the last year or so.

"Never have I seen steaks near this price, even at a fancy restaurant just for the steak," the resident wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of two steaks on Sunday, one marked at $80.50 and the other, a whopping $91.29.

Of course, tons of reaction has ensued from shoppers who are likewise enraged about the cost of food in the region, which hasn't seemed to fall in months.

Many are chiming in to say that they have also never seen store-bought steak so costly, and that this is yet another sign of the economic times in which grocery store executives are profiting bigtime and the average person, indebted, is hardly getting by.

Some say they simply refuse to dish out that amount of cash for certain items, and expect others will do the same, which could mean more food left on the shelves to expire, or more theft.

Of course, grocery giants like Loblaws are already responding to increased instances of shoplifting at their Toronto-area stores with security gates and other measures, while consumers have not been shy about not paying for overpriced food and other goods.

(One law firm in the city,  in response to a perceived uptick in people taking basic food staples and necessities, actually said it will defend anyone caught stealing from a supermarket pro bono.)

While retailers have blamed inflation and an increase in costs on their end for the huge jump in prices facing consumers, food inflation continues to spike higher than the rate of inflation for other goods and services, according to Statistics Canada data.

StatCan's Consumer Price Index for July shows that food inflation was up 8.5 per cent year-over-year, compared to the general inflation rate of 3.3 per cent.

Even budget supermarkets have given residents some serious sticker shock lately, with everything from eggs and chicken to vanilla extract and Maple syrup doubling or more.

Quite a few people are noting in this specific case, though, that the steak in question — a very large AAA-grade tomahawk — would always be a pricey luxury item that people shouldn't be complaining about if it's not in their budget.

Lead photo by

Sylvia Matthews/Google


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