To include energy and food in your inflation calculation or not to include food and energy, that is the question.

If you add them in, the new August Producer Price Index ticks down 0.1%. But if you strip them from the PPI, month-on-month prices are up 0.3%. The price of food and energy are both vital to producers and consumers, and volatile.

Inflation really should be looked at with and without food and energy, said economist Erin McLaughlin with The Conference Board. 

“I think one thing that's interesting about this moment is that energy prices have been decreasing,” McLaughlin said. “It sort of has offset some of those overall numbers, so we could see increases in other sort of durable goods or food.”

Decreasing crude oil prices have been pulling down headline inflation numbers. but Mark Finley with Rice University isn’t sure how long that can last unless oil prices drop even further. 

“It's going to be difficult for gasoline to continue to be a drag on you know, the headline inflation numbers,” Finley said.

And not all energy prices are decreasing.

“Natural gas prices, on the other hand, have been a little more volatile to the upside for this year and so that's led to an increase in electricity prices across the board,” said Ed Hirs with University of Houston.

On the food side of inflation, prices barely ticked up in August’s PPI — but that hardly tells the whole story.

“Right now we have some disastrously low prices for agricultural commodities like corn, cotton, rice, soybeans,” said Texas A&M’s David Anderson. 

That’s disastrously low for farmers. On the other hand, if you look at beef…

“For ranchers, you know, the best prices they've ever seen, and probably the most profitable prices they've ever seen,” Anderson said.

Just within agriculture he said, because of things like weather and bird viruses, prices are kind of all over the place.