U.S. food shoppers hit the highway to save a buck

By Lisa Baertlein

SANTA CLARITA, California (Reuters) - Kathy Bloss and her two elderly neighbors should be enjoying a quiet retirement, but instead they are commuting -- not to a job, but to a Wal-Mart in search of cheap food.

With prices on basic foodstuffs escalating, they regularly drive the 70 miles roundtrip to shop at a Wal-Mart Supercenter north of Los Angeles, carpooling to save gas.

Rising costs for milk, meat and eggs have prompted some U.S. shoppers to travel further out of their way for deals. But with gas prices also climbing, some of those same people are starting to wonder if it is worth the effort.

"Everything's going up, especially gas prices," Wanda Fonseca told Reuters Television in an interview at a Wal-Mart in Secaucus, New Jersey.

The mother of two said she has traded down by shifting her shopping visits from Target to Wal-Mart.

"I'd rather come here, spend less money than go to Target," said Fonseca, whose Hoboken home is a five-minute drive from Target and a 20-to-25-minute drive from Wal-Mart.

U.S. gas prices are up more than 20 percent from a year ago to an average of $3.30 per gallon, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

In California, gas prices are even more painful, at $3.65 for a gallon of regular, because the state uses a cleaner-burning formula only available from certain refiners.