Yet bread, a staple food, rose by precisely that amount over the same period. Only most of us did not notice it. This is hardly surprising because in price terms the increase was considerably less; it was just that, gram for gram, we paid more for less.
The standard loaf of 1990 weighed 850g. At least 10 years later, and courtesy of deregulation, that standard loaf weighed in at 700g.
But for the purposes of official statistical evaluation, a loaf is a loaf is a loaf. So the rate of inflation relating to bread was rather grossly understated.
Bread provides a dramatic example of the way in which rises in the real cost of living can be disguised.
There are, for example, three grades of mealie meal and the more expensive - pap - grade quoted a decade ago has now been replaced, for statistical purposes, with the cheapest grade.
The price of mealie meal, on which the lowest-paid workers spend on average 16 percent of their disposable income, has risen on average by more than 100 percent over the past year.
Yet the official, average rate of price increases for food in the same period is put at 12.5 percent.
Any regular shopper knows what the price rises have been for what they buy. Yet the whole question of inflation tends to leave most people utterly confused.
This is not surprising. Mainstream economists and politicians pontificate endlessly about economics in a manner that cloaks what Dale Carnegie called the dismal science in a mystique it does not warrant. Inflation is often presented as some sort of natural phenomenon such as the weather that occurs with no human agency involved.
But the example of the price of bread and the reduction in size to further ramp the price is very simple and quite understandable to the population at large. Not comparing like with like is a common practice in official estimates of food price inflation of how much more it costs us on average to eat.
Food prices are also calculated on the basis of what is charged by the big supermarket chains. These tend to cater for the more affluent sectors of the population.
The supermarket chains buy in bulk and sell at lower margins because of volume.
The township spazas, rural stores and corner cafes that cater for many of the lowest paid, have neither the buying power nor the leeway in terms of margins.
What this means is that when the affluent sectors are feeling the pinch, the poor are being crushed. The implications for the health of the population are frightening.
Research by the department of health, for example, indicates that food security in South Africa deteriorated between 1995 and 1999. It showed an increase in the number of malnourished children and a dramatic increase in chronic malnutrition.
These points have all been made clearly and calmly in a food security report presented to the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) by Cosatu. The report was compiled by researchers from Cosatu and the federation's National Labour and Education Institute from data collected and collated by several affiliates.
It was presented to the Nedlac management committee more than two months ago. So far, few of its findings and proposals have been publicised.
Yet the findings and the related commentary strip away the often confused and confusing jargon that tends to be paraded as informed analysis. Many of the quite detailed proposals it puts forward to counter what is now recognised as a crisis, tend to run counter to current economic orthodoxy.
Not that the proposals are very radical. They range from expanding feeding schemes to school children and to other vulnerable groups, to taking strong measures to ensure that the benefits of the removal of VAT are passed on to consumers.
There are also sound proposals for improving agricultural productivity and ensuring lower prices, especially of grains, by tariff adjustments.
The conventional cry about there being no money available to implement otherwise sensible proposals is also pre-empted by pointing out that the government's agriculture debt management account now contains R1.2 billion.
It is merely a matter of deciding how best this money can and should be spent.
With official inflation likely to reach double figures soon, business and the political powers would do well to pay some urgent attention to these food security proposals from the country's leading trade union federation.