As bulk food retailers like Costco and Sam's Club have placed restrictions on the amount of rice customers can purchase at one time, the reality of hoarding is setting in. It's a vicious cycle, because as demand for a product goes up, it's availability becomes limited and drives the price up. Even though you may be limited to buying a maximum of four bags of rice from Sam's Club on your next visit, other types of food are fair game and experts are encouraging people to start stocking up.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

Some of the items consumers are encouraged to stockpile include dried pasta, rice (ironically enough), cereal and a variety of canned goods such as fish and fruits and vegetables. We can hope this is just a passing trend and that food costs will level out, however as one wise individual pointed out, when gas prices spiked in recent years, many hoped - and in some cases wrongfully assumed - that it was just temporary. Now as oil races toward the $120 per barrel mark, all that optimism has dried up. Kind of like the rice supply.

» The Wall Street Journal