Nearly everything you buy at a retail store is shipped in by truck. The store is probably operating at about 6% margin and can't afford to absorb the additional fuel costs and nether can the trucking company. So the rising cost of fuel is ultimately paid by the customer. That applies to everything and not just food.
Regards,
GtG
Yes, fuel is an issue. Also gov’t mandated ethanol production increases has sent corn costs and other commodities through the roof. ie. need much more corn for ethanol, the price goes up, farmers switch from planting soybeans to corn for the better price, reducing the supply of soybeans, making the price go up. We are in the early stages of a 10 year cascading food inflation as a result. Have you seen how much ethanol production is going to increase in the next 10 years? In the hundreds of percent.