'You're in for a shock': Higher prices for fruitcake-makers in 1978
Inflation, not demand, was making fruitcake more expensive in the late 1970s
The cost of making a fruitcake was soaring in 1978.
And then, just as now, some people would say: Who cares?
But surely even the fruitcake-haters would be interested to know about the sky-high inflation that was pushing up the price of the kinds of fruit and nuts used to produce the much-maligned holiday treat.
In December 1978, CBC's Marketplace reported that the cost to make a homemade fruitcake had jumped more than 50 per cent since the previous Christmas.
'The faster you bake it, the better off you'll be'
The soaring costs were illustrated on screen with a cartoon graphic featuring a frustrated woman, in an apron, looking at a skyrocketing price on a graph nailed to the wall of her kitchen.
"The cost of ingredients for a fruitcake are going up almost daily. So, the faster you bake it, the better off you'll be," the show's Joan Watson told viewers.
Watson said Marketplace looked at what a fruitcake had cost to make a year earlier, as well as a month before the broadcast and at the then-present time.
"Due to higher prices for fruit and nuts, the cake we baked a year ago, costing a total of $11.76, would have cost us $15.08 to make in October and $18.23 to bake it in November," said Watson, noting the Marketplace estimate did not include any changes in the prices of flour, eggs, shortening and spices.
"So if you haven't baked it yet, or made your plum puddings, you're in for a shock."