Sugar and sweets, the grocery category covering candy, baking sugar and similar items, are forecast to cost 6.6 percent more in 2026 than in 2025, according to the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service Food Price Outlook updated September 25, 2026. That is well above the 2.4 percent increase the same forecast projects for food-at-home prices overall this year, making sugar and sweets one of the fastest-rising categories on the agency’s list even as the broader grocery basket climbs more slowly.
A grocery category rising nearly three times faster than the overall food budget. This article doesn’t address the other fixed costs also squeezing that same budget, but The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit’s heating, cooling and home-repair help does. See the heating and cooling help for a tighter budget →
Sugar and sweets: a 6.6 percent forecast that outpaces the grocery basket
The Economic Research Service’s Food Price Outlook puts the 2026 sugar-and-sweets forecast at 6.6 percent, with a prediction interval running from 5.8 to 7.4 percent, a comparatively tight range that reflects a near-term, within-the-year forecast rather than a projection stretching into 2027. That range still puts sugar and sweets meaningfully above the 2.4 percent the agency forecasts for food-at-home prices as a whole in 2026.
The gap between the category and the overall grocery average is not small. A household spending on candy, baking sugar or other sweets this year is facing a rate of increase nearly three times the pace of food-at-home prices generally, according to the agency’s own two figures side by side, even though both numbers come from the same September 2026 update. No other widely purchased grocery category in the same forecast table combines that size of increase with that narrow a prediction interval.
For a retiree keeping candy or baking supplies on hand for grandchildren, holiday gifts or a home-baking habit, that gap means the category most likely to show up around the fourth quarter is also the one the agency’s own data says is running hottest, a detail obscured by any headline number that only reports the all-food or food-at-home average. A fixed monthly grocery allowance that assumed a 2.4 percent rise across the board would come up short specifically in the sweets aisle, even if the rest of the cart tracked the average closely.
Coffee, soda and other drinks: a 4.2 percent forecast of their own
Sugar and sweets is not the only fast-rising category in the same September update. The agency’s Food Price Outlook separately forecasts nonalcoholic beverages, a category that includes coffee, soda and juice, rising 4.2 percent in 2026, with an interval of 3.5 to 5.0 percent, also above the 2.4 percent food-at-home average even though it trails sugar and sweets’ 6.6 percent pace. Coffee in particular has drawn attention this year as one of the more visible items in that beverage category for households that buy it regularly rather than occasionally.
Both categories sit well above the all-food forecast of 2.9 percent for 2026, meaning a grocery cart weighted toward sweets and beverages is being pulled upward by two of the faster-moving categories the agency tracks, while categories moving more slowly, or falling outright, such as eggs at a forecast decline of 29.4 percent, pull the blended average back down. The all-food figure is, by definition, an average across categories moving in opposite directions at very different speeds, not a number any single category actually experiences.
That blending is exactly why a single all-food or food-at-home percentage understates what a household actually experiences at the register if its cart leans toward coffee, soda and sweets rather than the categories dragging the average lower. The agency’s category-level breakdown, not its headline number, is what determines whether a given shopping list is running above or below the reported average.
Why sweets and drinks are outpacing the average this year
The Economic Research Service’s forecast does not attribute a specific cause to the sugar-and-sweets or nonalcoholic-beverage increases in the summary table itself; it reports the percentage and the interval without a category-by-category explanation in the same section. What the data shows clearly is the pattern: two discretionary, less-essential categories running faster than staples-heavy food-at-home overall, a gap the agency has published rather than smoothed over. That leaves the reader with the size of the increase but not the agency’s own account of what is driving sugar and beverage prices specifically, as distinct from the broader grocery basket.
The forecast intervals attached to both categories, 5.8 to 7.4 percent for sugar and sweets and 3.5 to 5.0 percent for beverages, are narrower than the wide range the same agency gives its 2027 whole-basket forecast, reflecting that a within-year projection carries less uncertainty than one reaching a full year further out. That narrower band is part of why the 6.6 percent figure carries more weight as a near-term planning number than a multi-year projection would.
What the agency’s own numbers settle is the relative ranking, sugar and sweets fastest, beverages next, the all-food average in between, and eggs pulling the other direction entirely. What they do not settle is how any one household’s actual grocery list compares to that ranking, since the answer depends entirely on how much of a given cart is filled with the categories rising fastest versus the ones offsetting them, a mix the agency’s summary table cannot capture for any individual shopper.
A treat-aisle increase that outruns the grocery average
USDA’s 6.6 percent sugar-and-sweets forecast and its 4.2 percent nonalcoholic-beverage forecast both outpace the 2.4 percent overall food-at-home number for 2026, and neither figure says anything about the property tax, heating or cooling bills that draw from the same household budget.
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This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
