Prices won’t leave holiday grilling cold

Americans aren’t letting high food costs cause their Fourth of July cookouts to fizzle.

U.S. consumers are expected to buy more than 110 million pounds of hot dogs in the four weeks surrounding the holiday, according to Nielsen Co. research. The holiday is the biggest hot-dog-eating period of the year, with shoppers spending about $215 million of their usual annual $2 billion in hot dog expenditures, Nielsen said.

More than 25 million pounds of fresh ground beef, worth $117 million, and more than 32 million pounds of frozen ground beef, worth nearly $71 million, also will find their way into shopping carts, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based research company said.

Although the cost of fresh ground beef has slipped 0.6% in the last year and hot dog prices have risen a scant 1.5%, buns have jumped 19.5% in price, Nielsen said. Potato chips are 18.8% more expensive than they were last Fourth of July.