Hey John, I'm sorry that you're being forced to restrict what you buy for food, and where. Where I am in the United States, there's a central hub for BIG business like Walmart and the trucking industry, and even still, food prices have gone up dramatically in the past few years. 20+ years ago, the avg American could eat a large meal at a fast food restaurant for ~$5. Such a thing is a pipe-dream now.

I don't recognize fast food as it was created. It's no longer cheap, and the more you buy at a time, the more it costs, of course, and with high state and local sales taxes (unlike one, single VAT) it gets really cost-prohibitive to shop regularly. I try to shop for food only once every two weeks. I tend to stock up best I can, best bang for the buck.

If you want to eat healthy in the states, your wallet needs to be packed if you want to enjoy that quality of life. I avoid most processed foods & sugar, and yet, my food bills keep going up, month-after-month, year-after-year, buying less and less with the money I have.

I've seen the devaluation of the Dollar for so long, that it's grown numbing to me, there's nothing I can do to protect my purchasing power, so long as assets are all denominated in Dollars.

Hearing from your circumstances, this is where I feel like local economies and parallel economies HAVE to be built. It's inexcusable that food prices have gone so high, considering every government on earth is guilty of taxing its citizens' wealth (income) and assets (house, land, livestock).