Food shoppers trading down on expensive items like soda, wine, snacks

The Seattle Times reports:

Julie Gleason walks past the artisan bread section at Top Food & Drug in Shoreline, wistfully remembering a time when her family could afford a good rosemary bread.

"Now, it's usually a double-loaf pack of wheat bread from Costco that costs about $3.50," she said. "With artisan bread, the next day it starts getting stale and you can't make sandwiches out of it."

Gleason also stopped buying soda pop, chips and cookies after her husband, Schy, was laid off last summer. She's cut her grocery bill almost in half, to about $400 a month for a family of five, including two teenagers and her mother.

An article on saving money.