I live in Burlington (#2 on the list).<p>Yes, we spend a lot on food but most of it is really high quality and from within 100 miles. The most convenient grocery in Burlington is City Market Co-op, which has the largest sales volume of any single-store food co-op in the country. That's probably skewing the data.
Keep in mind this is based on individuals' food spending, not the overall cost of food.<p>Maybe Hawaii and Vermont, which are some of the healthiest states, look expensive because people there buy more fresh produce and organic food.<p>They only used data for the most populous city in each state. Weird.
Houston (rather how nice of a place is to live) is probably one of the best kept secrets in the US. Despite some of the well-known shortcomings, mostly related to extreme weather events, for the most part is a kind, diverse, healthy and all in all super friendly place for new comers. Food is awesome and being lucky enough to have a good paying job, things like rent or groceries are incredibly affordable, esp. when comparing to neighboring cities (I’m personally in love with Austin but living there has plenty of issues too).
A bit outside Philly. Over the past several years, we've average $275-300 month per person for two adults. Another $100 month per person eating out. It's a bit tough to tell if they estimate buying a preselected set of food items? Do these costs reflect regional preferences at all?
I think it’s more expensive in Seattle because we have a lot of high quality food stores. Food in the us is too cheap, it should be more expensive everywhere