Fifty dollars didn’t exactly go a long way in Bermuda’s supermarkets ten years ago. It goes a much shorter distance today.The Royal Gazette embarked on a food shopping trip to see what you could get for $50 using 2002 prices, and repeated the task using 2012 prices. The difference in our shopping baskets was telling.In 2002, for a total of $49.17, you could get a whole-wheat loaf, cornflakes, milk, rice, eggs, ground beef, codfish, potatoes, hot dogs, butter, mayonnaise, apples, bananas and orange juice.Not enough to live like a king but, with a bit of careful planning, sufficient to keep an average sized family going for a weekend.But by 2012, the combined price of all those items has leaped to $73.70, meaning we needed to put a third of our items back on the shelves to bring us back below $50.Removing orange juice, apples, bananas, eggs, ground beef and cornflakes reduced the figure to $49.85.They were hardly luxuries we were deciding to discard, but we figured we could drink tap water instead of orange juice and chose to prioritise starch over fruits. Cornflakes, eggs and ground beef were just items we would have to do without.There are alternative ways of cutting the bill to $50, and dietitians would no doubt urge you not to purchase the mayonnaise or hot dogs, but we tried to reflect on how the average family would meet its needs in the real Bermuda.A comparison of prices between January 2002 and January 2012, based on figures provided by Government, confirms many shoppers’ complaints that the price of mayonnaise, a Bermudian favourite, has leaped.A 32 fl oz jar, which cost $3.99 ten years ago, now sets you back $6.28, a rise of 36 percent.But some staple items have shot up even more rapidly. A 5lb bag of potatoes, and a 2lb bag of carrots, have both climbed from $3.99 to $5.99, a rise of just over 50 percent; a loaf of whole-wheat bread has soared by 67 percent from $3.45 to $5.75; a quart of milk has jumped 44 percent from $3.69 to $5.34; and a 3lb box of rice has gone from $3.79 to $6.35, a rise of 67 percent.Another popular local item, dried codfish, has gone up by more than 28 percent, from $6.99 to $8.99 for a 16oz packet. Butter has more than doubled, from $2.28 to $5.16 for a 15oz packet, a rise of 130 percent.Virtually all items on our list have gone up significantly over the past decade. Many have stayed the same during the past 12 months, as concerns have increasingly been voiced about the tough cost of living in the economic crisis.A small handful, including ground beef and flour, have decreased over the past year, but they still cost more today than ten years ago. The exception is instant coffee, an 8oz jar of which has decreased from $10.48 in 2002 to $9.71 in 2012.* All the food items bought were donated to the Salvation Army.