These statistics always strike me when I'm buying such products as they constitute what has various been called "basic". Indeed there are surely methodological issues with such a measurement as it does not show the quality of the bread or milk in terms of the cost that you are paying for that quality.
This is where tomatoes come in for me. I am not suggesting that they be used as a new measurement of the standard of living. Instead, I think that they are very useful in gauging the difference between different supermarkets and shops in any specific area.
As a friend of mine recently summarised, tomatoes are something that you always need to buy. They are clear cut, relatively inexpensive and pretty much essential. Yet the quality of a tomato does vary quite noticeably from shop to shop. You can generally always buy a pack of 6 tomatoes for a certain amount of money and this makes comparison easy.
So let's adopt the tomato as a standard of the quality and cost of living, alongside traditional products.
-The English Student
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