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The 16.4% monthly decline was the largest ever recorded for lettuce in the consumer price index, but few shoppers rushed to buy
.The lettuce price index fell 16.4% in July from June, the largest one-month decline on record for the category in the consumer price index, as a multistate cyclospora outbreak drove consumers away from the leafy green.
Within the CPI's food category, no item fell harder month-over-month in July than lettuce, a month in which overall food prices rose just 0.1%. Even after July's plunge, lettuce prices are still up 7.5% compared with a year earlier, outpacing the 3.4% rise in the broader CPI over the same stretch.
"It's very likely due to the cyclospora outbreak and consumers just not wanting to buy lettuce right now," Jeremy Horpedahl, an associate economics professor at the University of Central Arkansas, told CNBC. "Consumers are not going to rush out and buy this now just because it's cheaper. It's fallen because nobody wants it."
