From free chicken feed to €70/kg: foods that became luxuries

From poor man's antiestéticast to rich man's whim: how prices skyrocketed

A thread circulating for months in economic forums captures a growing sentiment in Spanish kitchens: what our grandparents ate—and sometimes threw away—is now priced like caviar. The starting point is a video reviewing ten foods that went from being free giveaways to nearly unattainable items. The most repeated anecdote concerns elvers: moving from catching them by the kilo in the Albufera irrigation ditches with a bucket and flashlight to paying thousands of euros per kilo for early-season batches, according to one participant. This isn't just dinner-table exaggeration; it confirms that the shopping basket has changed ownership.

Fish used as bait that is now worth gold

The list of products that have jumped categories is long and varied. Santoña anchovies were served as free tapas in any bar alongside a piece of Manchego cheese; today they don't drop below €70 per kilo, says a participant. Mojama or northern bonito in oil hover around €30 per kilo. Simple horse mackerel, once humble fish, costs €8 per kilo gross, but after removing bones, viscera, and head, the real meat price soars to €20, based on calculations shared in the thread. Octopus, formerly poor people's food, is at €20 per kilo. Goose barnacles were used for animal feed until someone decided they were a delicacy in the late eighties. Elvers were almost given away in the sixties.

There is a pattern repeated in almost all cases: what was once despised is now claimed. Monkfish went into flour, small green fish into feed, cuttlefish weren't even eaten. Rockfish—breams, wrasses, goatfish, parrotfish—was thrown away. Today all that has auction prices. And it doesn't just happen with fish.

Offal that was scraps and is now luxury

Offal deserves its own chapter. Lamb sweetbreads are found at €20 per kilo, according to a participant. Two kilos of chicken intestines and entrails cost €20, but after cooking barely 300 grams of final product remain. Pig trotters are €4 each; ears are €3 each; pig snout is €4. Zarajos (lamb intestines) are €2 and €3 each. Bones for stock are €6 per kilo. Bones, folks. What the butcher used to give away for free ("take it kid, your grandma said you were making stew") now has a price tag.

Against this view, some nuance the argument. One participant claims pig ear and foot can be found at €4.50 per kilo and that with a well-cleaned trotter and beans from La Bañeza, you eat for €3.10. Another argues that if choosing, he prefers a kilo of sweetbreads at €20 over lamb chops at the same price, because you eat everything in sweetbreads while 60% of chops are bone and fat. The controversy is served.

Why has everything become so expensive?

The explanations offered are several and don't always align. One of the most repeated is monetary: chronic public deficits, massive public debt issuance, and central banks buying that debt on their balance sheets. The result, it is argued, is money created from nothing whose value decreases. It's not that everything is more expensive, it's that money is worth less. This is the way to reduce the real value of debts, this school of thought maintains.

Another line points to demographics and global population expansion, with more mouths to feed and increasing pressure on resources. Some also point to trends: goose barnacles became fashionable in the late eighties, lamb chops popularized in the late sixties. And a fourth path, less economic and more political, argues purchasing power peaked years ago and has only fallen since. As seen, the discussion has no clear winner.

Chicken was very expensive and sole was affordable for a laborer

Nostalgia plays tricks, and data proves it. Several participants recall that in their childhood, sole, cod, red mullet, veal, rabbit, cockles, and shrimp were bought any day of the year, not just at Christmas. These were working-class families: a father who was a construction laborer could pay for an apartment, several cars, and support a vvife and three children. That said, without second homes or vacations, only short trips or family visits. Others remember that chicken was a luxury dish in seventies restaurants, and that rapeseed oil poisoning occurred in 1981. Memory is selective, but then and now prices admit no debate.

The exact point where analysis gets stuck

The discussion has shifted from the specific price of each food to root causes, where it has remained stalled. Some blame monetary policy, others demographics, others trends, and others purchasing power. What nobody disputes is the result: the shopping basket that was everyday for a working-class family forty years ago is now a whim. Meanwhile, the question of whether this can be reversed remains unanswered.