Countering the food price increase in Malaysia

Have you notice the huge price increase in imported foods? Normally butter costs below RM4. Now, it costs RM8+. This is crazy!

And the cream that I normally buy costs around RM3+. Yesterday, I saw this Denmark brand cream costing RM8.50. Now, I can totally forget about French imports like President.

Last evening, my hubby bought four pieces of fried belacan chicken. The chicken pieces were meant for the kids. But my little boy quietly sat at the dining table and finished 3 pieces! LOL. One piece costs RM2.50 and that is ten bucks of chicken there. Plus the chicken piece is so small so my little boy conveniently whacked them all.

I told hubby don’t ever buy again because for ten bucks, I can buy a huge chicken and fry them myself. It is as tasty, much cleaner and healthier. True enough, this morning, he bought 6 pieces of chicken drumsticks and I just fried them. One piece is only about 80 sen and six pieces cost around RM5. If we buy, it means RM2.50 x 6 = RM12. The cost of oil and gas are neglible.

Meanwhile, all the curry mee, chicken rice, kueh, ham chi peng and every kind of foods have increased their prices between 20 sen to 50 sen. A ham chi peng now costs 70 instead of the usual 50 sen.

We cannot blame the hawkers because everything is so expensive now and they too need to feed their families. But do things like those imported food stuffs must really increase that much? It is more than 100% for some of them and these are only Australian imports. As far as I know, the exchange rate of Australian Dollar and MYR have not changed that much. I wonder how the more expensive restaurants who serve Western foods survive?

steak grill

So I guess to counter all these price increases, we can start from home. Cook them yourselves. It is a lot cheaper, nicer and healthier. We made a batch of steaks and prawns grill last night as our dinner. A fraction of the cost than what we need to pay if all six of us are eating in a restaurant. The fun of cooking this way is priceless.

9 Replies to “Countering the food price increase in Malaysia”

  1. yeah, golden churn and SCS are now abt RM8.70!! gila or wat?! even the cream cheese sold at baking specialty store that used to cost only RM9 for 500g is now RM13. that’s nearly 50% increase!

  2. Lilian, I think I can explain the part about butter raising about 50%. According to the milk suppliers, its not much about the exchange rates but the milk shortage in New Zealand in the past year. Apparently the cows were stressed due to some weather condition (if not mistaken) and could not produce much milk and therefore causing world shortage. Not only are milk powders affected but all dairy products are affected also. In fact, baby milk powder alone cost increase at least a minimum of 3 times alone last year! And of course, those products like Milo also increased because the suppliers claim that the product contains quite a high percentage of milk.

  3. Icequeen – Ohhh…the cows stressed? LOL, I wasn’t aware of that but am very geram to see everything so expensive. Even the non-dairy stuffs like Vitalite and other spreads have increased many folds.

    sooi2 – Yalor, I used to use a lot of cream but now, must cut cost and use milk instead. Can diet also.

    sherwin – It is electric one. I got it from BonusLink exchange, I think. Quite fun to bring out and have bbq in the comfort of our home.

  4. Cow stressed?

    I only buy 2 brands of butter all these years.. Lurpark and President. Lurpark price has skyrocketted 80% from RM6++ to now a whopping while President only raise like 10%… President used to be the more premium one of all.. and this supposedly cheaper Lurpark is not even more expensive than President. shouldn’t all butter raise price if cow were stressed?

    Not only butter, my favourite Luncheon meat is either running low on stock everywhere or is selling 60% more now. Those Guling sparerib cans also raise around 50%… pig stress now and refuse to mate? hahaha…

    All this happen beginning of the year….. haizzz..

  5. Shock when I found out SCS in Tesco cost RM8.50.
    Now I need to find out whether IKEA cheese price increase or not (450gm for RM9.00) . Hope cows in Sweden not going on strike.

  6. heyya…the food looks great
    actually i have a question for you
    where did u bought that grill pan? and how much?
    thanks a million 🙂

  7. Hi.
    I must say i enjoyed your column very much. Keep up the good work.
    I agree with you that rising food prices is causing panic for everyone.
    As i’m in the financial/investment field, we are constantly bombarded by enormous amount of data and information
    For the time being, just keep your finger cross!!

  8. Butter priced double everywhere.
    I can understand about cows being stressed, but margarine prices also increased!

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