During super-lean college days, I recall telling coworkers at the job which supported my education that buying fruits and vegetables was more expensive than, say, sandwich bread and baloney.

They were all working above me, middle-aged, and making enough that grocery prices weren’t a worry to them. They looked at me in disbelief, and all were skeptical that healthier eating was more expensive. In fact, they thought vegetables were cheaper. I said I had the receipts to prove it, and thought it was a typical disconnect between haves and have nots.

Today it is a generally accepted fact that healthy eating is expensive — too expensive for many Americans and for many people in our own community. Healthy eating is expensive in the short term and, without those healthful foods, even more expensive in the long term when years of a poor diet usually lead to health problems and associated expenses.

The more restrictive a diet is and the more healthful rules a consumer tries to apply, the more their grocery bill will increase. Organic, for example, is great, but it’s more expensive and probably always will be.

The old food pyramid which had provided a nutritional guideline of sorts for so many years was updated in 2010, and the new scheme suggests Americans eat more foods containing dietary fiber, potassium, vitamin D, and calcium. Following that guideline will add hundreds of dollars annually to a grocery bill. Beans and potatoes are among the more inexpensive ways to add fiber and potassium to a diet, but even that modest addition may add significantly to the average consumer’s food costs. Fortunately, beans and potatoes are usually in good supply at food banks for those least able to manage a higher grocery bill.

It’s interesting that while more than ever before is known about nutrition, most Americans have still not made a shift to healthful eating, and there are reasons beyond personal tastes and persuasive marketing. In a survey of 2,000 adults in King County, it was found that people who spend the most on groceries come closest to meeting the new federal nutritional guidelines, while those who spend the least have the lowest nutrient values and the highest consumption of saturated fat and added sugar.

We’ve made the connection in this column before between the cheap eating many families find themselves forced into with diabetes, obesity and heart disease. The assumption exists that many low-income people eat cheap, nutritionally poor food because it’s easier, tastes better and because they don’t know any better.

Many are skeptical when they see an overweight person using a food bank or on the streets, thinking they can’t be missing many meals. But often it’s a matter of the type of food more than it is the quantity of food.

For the folks in our community least able to get the groceries they really need beyond subsistence, ShareNet augments that nutritional picture with more fresh produce than ever before, thanks to the Grocery Rescue program and generous donations from home and small local growers such as the Kingston Food and Garden Co-op’s Giving Garden project.

There is a lot of disagreement on what makes food prices so high, with many of the key players passing the blame around, but most experts agree it’s not because of farmers. There are a host of reasons for high grocery bills, including the cost of corn, soybeans, wheat (all heavily subsidized), cattle, oil, gas, diesel, as well as unstable global markets and conditions. Food inflation is predicted to be 4.5 percent this year, while a more average inflationary rate is around 2.5 percent.

A recent USDA report broke down $1 of grocery spending and where it went: only 11.6 cents per dollar went to farmers in 2008, down from 14.5 cents in 1993. The rest goes to processing, packaging, transportation, retail and food service, which means more consumers are buying instant, packaged and pre-prepared meals, their least healthy option. Food service accounts for 33.7 cents of every dollar spent.

There are positive changes, such as the increase of interest in home gardens and self-sufficiency since 2008. Food is one of our country’s most significant problems. Until it’s fixed, there are food banks, and ShareNet helps the increasing numbers struggling with higher food prices and food instability.