In recent months, food prices have risen again in Portugal, putting pressure on family budgets and revealing strong differences between products in the essential basket. Among the 63 products that make up DECO PROteste’s essential food basket, broccoli is the food that has risen the most in price since the beginning of 2025. The increase was 34%, making this product the symbol of the rising cost of living on supermarket shelves in Portugal.
Broccoli, usually associated with a healthy diet, this year became one of the most expensive products on the Portuguese table. The price has increased continuously over the last few months, reflecting the difficulties that the agricultural sector faces in controlling production and transport costs.
According to DECO PROteste, the rise in broccoli is accompanied by significant increases in other foods consumed daily, such as eggs (32%) and oranges (24%). These products now occupy the top of the list of those that most contributed to the worsening of the food basket in 2025.
Food basket exceeds 242 euros
The weekly basket of essential food products, monitored by DECO PROteste, currently costs 242.24 euros, 0.48 euros less than the previous week, which represents a variation of 0.2%. Despite the slight decrease, the value remains well above that recorded at the beginning of the year, remaining an indicator of the persistence of food inflation.
The 63 products analyzed include meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, dairy, grocery and frozen foods. Since the association began monitoring prices, in January 2022, the basket has accumulated a total increase of 54.54 euros, equivalent to 29.06%.
Other relevant climbs
Although broccoli leads the accumulated increase in 2025, other products have registered significant increases in recent weeks. Whole grain cereals have become the most expensive recently, costing 4.09 euros, 53 cents more than the previous week, which represents an increase of 15%.
Sliced Flemish cheese rose 13%, mackerel rose 9%, while fresh hake, cake flour and extra virgin olive oil rose 8%. These values confirm that the upward trend continues to affect products from different categories.
Factors that explain the price escalation
DECO PROteste associates the increase in prices with a set of factors that have marked the agri-food sector in the last three years. The war in Ukraine continues to affect the supply of raw materials, especially cereals and fertilizers, while energy costs and the effects of drought hamper agricultural production in several European countries.
These elements, combined with transport and storage costs, have particularly impacted fresh products, such as vegetables and fruits, where prices tend to react quickly to cost variations.
The price behavior of this type of product in Portugal reflects the growing dependence on imports and the vulnerability of the national agricultural sector to external factors, such as climate instability and international fluctuations.
Relief measures had limited effect
In April 2023, the Portuguese Government created a VAT exemption on more than 40 essential foods, a measure that helped to temporarily mitigate the rise in prices. However, the reinstatement of the tax in 2024 and instability in the sector prevented this decline from being maintained in the long term.
This year, the return of inflationary pressure was once again felt in several daily use products. Among those that increased the most this year are ground roasted coffee, chocolate and, above all, broccoli, whose price rose more sharply than any other food analyzed.
Inflation stabilizes, but prices remain high
According to the National Statistics Institute, average annual inflation in Portugal fell to 2.4% in 2024, below the 4.3% recorded in 2023 and the 7.8% in 2022. Still, the slowdown in inflation was not fully reflected in the price of food.
In September 2025, the inflation rate remained at 2.4%, but data shows that the cost of the food basket continues to weigh significantly on family budgets, especially those with lower incomes.
How DECO PROtest is calculated
DECO PROteste collects product prices daily from the main supermarkets with an online store. The average is calculated based on the values of each item and the final sum determines the cost of the weekly basket. In Portugal, this monitoring has been important to understand how the price of each product reflects economic changes and the real impact of inflation on everyday purchases.
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