The amount of money Alaskans pay for a holiday dinner greatly depends on where they live. What does that add up to during the holidays?
Mike Jones is an economist with the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, whose work focuses on food systems and security. He was interested in the cost difference of a holiday meal between Anchorage and rural Alaska.
To calculate that, Jones collected prices from stores in Anchorage and Nome, using a holiday menu from the American Farm Bureau that includes turkey, ham, stuffing, veggies, rolls, potatoes, cranberries and pumpkin pie mix. He chose the cheapest option for each category, and included sale prices.
He found that the same meal costs 130% more in Nome versus Anchorage.
Jones spoke with reporter Ava White about what’s behind the grocery price divide. You can listen to the full interview above on the Alaska Economic Report or read the lightly-edited transcript below.
Mike Jones: Across the full menu, we saw an Anchorage price come in at about $77 for a large family dinner, and Nome came in significantly higher, at $177.45.
We see a lot of main differences in meat and protein. So, the menu includes turkey as well as ham and Nome versus Anchorage, those are about two to four times the cost per pound. We also see some pretty significant differences in frozen goods included in the menu, as well as the produce.
It's really, really expensive to eat whole fruits and vegetables, especially fresh fruits and vegetables in rural Alaska, it's hard to get it out there, and frankly, it is a food security question.
Ava White: Is it simply the logistics and refrigeration driving up those costs, or are there other factors that contribute to those higher prices?
MJ: All of our remote off road communities, even including a hub like Nome, are very hard to get to, and anytime you're transporting something by air, it's going to be more expensive.
We also see a lot of really big challenges in rural Alaska getting food to survive the journey. We've done a lot of mapping of food spoilage across the state, and Nome is no exception.
You see big spikes in produce that is lost, as in it has to get thrown away the second it gets to the store, particularly in the winter. So that sort of builds into the cost. The other thing that's worth mentioning is it's just expensive to run a store in off road Alaska.
AW: In rural Alaska, or Alaska in general, subsistence is obviously a really big thing here. Do you think a lot of families swap out the turkey and ham for maybe a traditional subsistence food?
MJ: Menus for families, especially around holidays, are a very cultural thing, and I would absolutely imagine, given the diversity in this state, that we would see different menus for Christmas all over the state, and particularly in off road communities where you have a lot of wild food collection, a lot of per capita wild food consumption.
I would imagine if the ham and the turkey is two to four times the cost, it's some of the most expensive price comparisons that would be right for substituting for wild foods. Plus, people might prefer eating wild proteins versus store bought proteins, even if it was the same price.
AW: Beef is not on this list, tell me why.
MJ: Beef isn't on this list for a couple reasons. And funny enough, my family usually eats beef for Christmas, but surveys across the broad U.S. have said that turkey and ham are the most commonly eaten items in the menu.
Beef prices are really challenging this year. There's been a lot of supply side constraints that have jacked up prices pretty substantially, at least over $1.5 per pound, even from July up through September, which is when we have national cost reporting. And so I would imagine, if people are watching their wallets this year, people are going to be rational actors and probably substitute out beef for other cheaper options.
I also want to say that the menu is reflective of the American Farm Bureau's official Thanksgiving extended menu, and so we're borrowing that for Christmas, since there's not a gold standard set menu.
AW: What's the star of your Christmas dinner this year?
MJ: I think we're actually going to pay more for beef because we're so used to it, and that's actually important. You have your traditions as a family, you value things, and sometimes when things get more expensive, you change your buying habits, and that's rational. But sometimes it just doesn't get expensive enough for you to change. And for us, I think we are going to stick with beef this year.
AW: It's common knowledge that everything costs more in rural Alaska. But does looking at it through a holiday lens reveal anything about food insecurity?
MJ: The holidays that we're talking about, whether it's Thanksgiving or Christmas meals that we're highlighting, they're falling in a really difficult time for supply chains.
In rural Alaska, you get these surges. After the PFD, there's a big surge in demand, and it puts a lot of strain on lift capacity, or the number of planes that you can move out. You only have so many planes and so many people working so many hours a day. And then Christmas and Thanksgiving, you have big demand, [and it] rushes a lot getting pushed through, because there's a lot of people buying things.
So, you have a lot of strain on that system that's coupled with a couple different things as well.
December 22 is the winter solstice. That is the least amount of light that we're going to have. And light matters in aviation – you need to be able to see, especially when you're flying under visual flight rules. If we're thinking in particular, flights out from the hub villages off road to the or from the hub communities out to the villages, that can matter a lot. So you have less hours to fly, you have a lot getting pushed through the system, and you get a lot of shock on the runway if you're loading a plane or unloading a plane.
If goods, especially perishables, are sitting there for two hours at -20, or even 30 minutes at -20, that's a big deal. And you're probably going to see that reflected in rates of spoilage, which we do see in the data, and probably the quality of what's on the shelf as well.
AW: Was anything cheaper in Nome?
MJ: We did see that a 12 pack of rolls, for whatever reason, was sort of at price parity on average between Anchorage and Nome. The next closest price was actually stuffing, and that was about 14% higher, russet potatoes were about 42% higher.
The biggest difference is, again, Turkey is about four times the price. It's worth noting that frozen turkey prices were exactly the same in Anchorage as in Portland, and Anchorage is generally at least 20% to 30% on average, more expensive than the rest of the US. We might just be getting a deal in Anchorage that folks outside of Anchorage aren't able to get.
Editor’s note: The graphics in this story were generated using an AI tool and verified by an editor and reporter. Alaska Public Media’s news team follows NPR’s ethics policy. You can find their AI section here.
