ctpublic.org – M’Lynn Gonzalez walks up and down the aisles of her local grocery store, picking up ingredients for dinner tonight. She finds what she needs, heads to the register and rings herself up. She sighs and takes her card out to pay as she reads her total — $40.
Gonzalez, a student at the University of Connecticut, says $40 is the average price she pays at the grocery store for just one dinner’s worth of ingredients. The cost of food and other essential items has risen beyond the budgets of many. Services such as food pantries continue to grow in popularity as the U.S. population deals with the increased costs of essential goods.