Kim Harrison said at times she feels as though she's being "nickel-and-dimed to death."

Standing outside an area Weis Markets store with a cart full of grocery bags, she said she doesn't know where else she can cut expenses.

"Me and a lady I work with were joking about eating dog food," said Harrison, a single mother whose York Township household includes herself and her preschool-age daughter. "Pretty soon I'm going to stop laughing."

When the price of gas started to cut too deeply into her budget last year, she started buying generic and cut most of the meat out of her and her daughter's diet, she said.

Harrison started to supplement her trips to "a real grocery store" such as Weis Markets with trips to dollar stores and a

surplus grocery store to make sure she's getting the best price, she said.

"It's like, embarrassing," the home health aide said. "I thought I was, like, middle class. ... I have a good job, but I'm ready to start (applying for) assistance."

Harrison is among the consumers who are trying to keep up with the price of groceries, which is increasing along with -- and because of -- the cost of gas and utilities.

Paying more: According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, overall food prices rose about 5 percent in 2007. The bureau's data shows that, in the last six months, prices have continued to increase for staples such as meat, cheese and bread.

A grocery cost comparison of four area grocery stores suggests
that York County is keeping up with -- or surpassing -- the national trend.

In April, it cost an average of $64.35 to buy 17 popular grocery list items at York County Weis Markets, Giant Food, Shurfine and Wal-Mart grocery stores. In October, it cost an average of $68.53 to buy the same items at the same four grocery stores.

The $4.18 increase represents a 6.5 percent increase in the price of the list items -- which included staples such as butter, milk, sugar and flour -- over the past six months.

While the price of some items remained steady or increased by less than about a dime, among the biggest increases were butter, Tide laundry detergent and Cottonelle toilet paper.

A pound of Land-O-Lakes salted butter went from $3.55 in April to $3.98 in October, a 12.1 percent increase.

The 100-ounce bottle of Tide cost $7.13 in April. Since then, the company has started to use concentrates that are billed as twice as powerful as the old formula. The new 50-ounce container, the equivalent of the old 100-ounce container, uses less packaging. But the price increased by 9.7 percent, to $7.82.

And the price of a 12-pack of double-roll Cottonelle toilet paper increased from $7.62 to $8.12, or 6.6 percent.

Giant shopper Krista Karr said her family also has started to shop at dollar stores, but not for food.

"We used to get name-brand everything," she said. "But I'm not about to lay out all this money on (paper and cleaning products) when we still have to get things to eat. I could rack up a hundred bucks on paper towels and Tylenol."

Ripple effect: Weis Markets spokesman Dennis Curtin said an entire chain of factors is behind the price increases, many of which are out of the grocery store's command.

Curtin said the surge in fuel costs has had "a ripple effect" through the food production pipeline, ending with the increased cost of moving products from grocer's warehouses to the grocer's stores.

It took a few months for the shelf price of some items to catch up with the higher cost of manufacturing, he said.

For example, the increase in the price of paper products could be because of the cost of getting trees to the manufacturing plant. It could have taken months for the paper products made to actually hit the shelves at a grocery store, he said.

And some items have had a greater price increase because they're influenced by more than one cost-increasing factor, he said.

Other factors: Laundry detergent could cost more because the packaging plastic is petroleum based, and laundry detergent is a heavy product to transport, he said.

In the dairy sector, price increases reflect not only the increased price of gas, but a higher cost of grain that is fed to the cows, Curtin said.

And because more corn is being diverted into the production of ethanol, it costs more to feed the animals that are the meat or dairy source, he said.

Corn also is used to make corn syrup, which is used to sweeten soda and other products, he said.

Harrison said she's frustrated that America needs gas to move goods.

"It's like the one thing they could raise the price on and have it affect everything," she said. "It's not like the stores are making more. It all goes to the gas companies."

--Reach Christina Kauffman at 505-5436 or ckauffman@yorkdis patch.com.