The nation's changing tastes has seen hot rotisserie chicken added to the goods basket used to measure the cost of living. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA
Today the Office of National Statistics publishes their monthly price indexes for February. This will mainly hit the news because inflation will be approaching 0% for the first time in 50 years but, of equal interest to food history nerds like me will be the announcement of a series of changes to the 'basket of goods' the ONS used to calculate inflation.
The basket is a series of over 120,000 prices for everything from household goods to holidays, but also contains a selection of common food stuffs. As the basket is updated regularly to reflect what people are eating, it provides a terrific feel for life in ordinary kitchens at the time.