Feeling helpless as you glance at your growing grocery bills? The nasty culprit is called food inflation, but rest assured you have weapons to fight the uptick in prices.
The price of groceries has increased by 4.5 percent from February 2011 to February 2012, according to the Consumer Price Index. Three factors are pushing that hike: rising commodity prices, rising fuel prices and the weakened value of the U.S. dollar, says Richard Volpe, research economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
From discovering how to neutralize the "grocery shrink ray" to learning to trade certain products for cheaper ones, here are five ways to slice your grocery tab in hopes of fighting food inflation.