Walk into any grocery store today and you’ll probably have the same reaction as everyone else: How did dinner get so expensive?
A package of steaks that used to be reserved for weekend grilling now feels like a splurge. Even chicken, long the go-to protein for families trying to stay on budget, has gotten noticeably more expensive. Groceries overall cost about 30 percent more than they did before the pandemic, and the USDA expects food-at-home prices to keep climbing this year. Families are thinking harder about every single trip to the supermarket.
That’s causing shoppers to rethink an old assumption: that seafood is always the luxury option.
Full disclosure before we go any further: I’ve spent my career in the seafood business, so I’ve got a horse in this race. Don’t take my word for any of this. The numbers below come from the USDA, and they’re easy to check.
The “Expensive Seafood” Myth
For decades, seafood has carried a reputation for being pricey. Say the word and most people picture fresh lobster, giant crab legs, or premium sushi.
That’s only part of the story. And lately, the numbers have moved.
In 2024, beef and veal prices rose 5.4 percent while fish and seafood prices actually fell 1.9 percent, according to the USDA. In 2025, beef jumped another 11.6 percent, the biggest grocery price increase that year outside of eggs, and the average price of ground beef crossed $6 a pound. This year the USDA is forecasting beef up nearly 11 percent again. As of June, beef prices were running almost 12 percent higher than a year earlier.
Add it up and beef costs roughly 30 percent more than it did three years ago. Seafood over the same stretch? Down one year, up modestly since. Seafood prices aren’t immune to inflation, and the USDA expects them to rise a bit faster than their long-term average this year. But a few percent and thirty percent are two very different problems.
The biggest surprise? Many shoppers never bother to compare.
The Beef Problem
The U.S. cattle herd is the smallest it has been in 75 years after years of drought, high feed costs, and rising production expenses. Fewer cattle means less beef, and demand hasn’t budged, so wholesale beef prices are sitting at record highs for this time of year.
For families feeding four or five people, steak night has become an occasional treat rather than a weekly tradition. Even ground beef, the workhorse of weeknight cooking, now forces a second look at the price tag.
A Straight Answer on Chicken
Let me be honest about chicken, because plenty of people in my position wouldn’t be. On pure price per pound, chicken is still hard to beat. Whole birds and leg quarters remain the cheapest protein in the store, period.
But the chicken most families actually buy is boneless, skinless breast, and that’s where the gap closes. Boneless breast runs around $4 a pound in much of the country. Frozen tilapia and swai fillets sit right in that range, and pollock often comes in under it. The seafood aisle isn’t competing with the $1.99 whole bird. It’s competing with the chicken you actually put in your cart, and it’s holding its own.
Price Per Plate, Not Price Per Pound
Here’s the number the shelf tag doesn’t show you: how much of what you’re buying actually gets eaten.
A fillet is essentially all food. Bone-in chicken is not. Roughly a third of a package of thighs or leg quarters is bone and skin headed for the trash, which means that $2.49-a-pound tray of thighs works out to nearly $4 a pound of meat you actually eat. A $4.99 pound of frozen tilapia is $4.99 of food. No asterisk. Beef comes with its own fine print, since a well-marbled cut gives up a real share of its weight to fat and shrink on the grill.
Run the math on dinner for a family of four, figuring a pound and a half of protein on the table. Sirloin gets you there for around $19 at today’s prices. Ground beef, about $9.50. Boneless chicken breast, roughly $6. Frozen tilapia, about $7. Frozen salmon portions, around $13, which puts salmon at less than steak money and white fish trading even with chicken breast.
That’s the 2026 grocery store. It doesn’t match what most of us learned to expect.
Seafood Delivers More Than Protein
There’s also what comes with the fish. Seafood is naturally packed with lean protein and delivers nutrients many Americans don’t get enough of, including omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, selenium, and iodine. The American Heart Association recommends eating seafood at least twice a week, and regular seafood consumption has been linked to better heart health. So this isn’t simply swapping one protein for another. It’s trading up on nutrition at the same time.
Your Freezer Might Be Your Best Grocery Strategy
One of the biggest challenges facing American households isn’t just food prices. It’s food waste. The USDA estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of the U.S. food supply is wasted every year, and much of that happens in our own homes. We’ve all done it. You buy fresh meat with the best intentions, life gets busy, and a week later it goes in the trash.
Do the math on that habit. Throw out just one in five packages of fresh meat you buy and everything you paid effectively costs 25 percent more per pound you actually served. That $6.30 ground beef just became $7.90. Frozen seafood doesn’t have that problem. Need dinner for two? Cook two fillets. Need dinner for six? Cook six. The rest stays in the freezer until next week, and none of it ends up in the garbage.
Dinner in Under 20 Minutes
Most people don’t skip seafood because they don’t like it. They skip it because they think it’s difficult to cook.
That may have been true years ago. Today, most frozen seafood goes straight from freezer to oven, air fryer, or stovetop and hits the table in less than 20 minutes. No thawing all day. No complicated recipes. For a weeknight, it’s one of the fastest proteins in the store.
The Bottom Line
Nobody is suggesting families give up burgers or grilled chicken forever. But if you haven’t compared prices lately, you’re shopping on old information. The grocery cart of 2026 doesn’t look like the grocery cart of 2019, and the smartest shoppers aren’t buying based on old assumptions. They’re buying based on today’s numbers.
Seafood is no longer just a special-occasion meal. For families trying to stretch every grocery dollar while still putting healthy dinners on the table, it may be one of the best values in the entire store.
Mark Frisch is the executive vice president and co-owner of Beaver Street Fisheries.
