Nationwide, Thanksgiving food prices rose 6 percent from last year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In addition, a meal for a family of ten this year will cost an average of $44.21, over $2 more than what it cost in 2007.

Consumers may wonder how, considering today’s lower gas prices, they are still ending up paying more for tomorrow’s meal – specifically, as much as $2.20 more for a 12-oz. package of brown-n-serve rolls and $3.12 more for three pounds of sweet potatoes.

Such increases, including the $1.46 more for a 16-lb. turkey, results from this year’s heavy fluctuation in both food and energy wholesale prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices rose as high as 1.5 percent in June, when energy prices also rose 5.6 percent. Since then however, while oil prices have dropped drastically, food prices remained as high as they did during the summer.

“The pasta you bought in the store last weekend is based on wheat that was grown months ago – potentially as much as a year ago,” said Stewart Ramsey of IHS Global Insight to MSNBC. As for those turkeys, their prices reflect the high price of corn they were fed months ago.

As a result, consumers have been flocking toward smaller grocery stores and discounters like Save-A-Lot, to cut both time and money spent. Trader Joe’s, a chain of over 300 stores with an organic focus, also prides its ability to buy directly from suppliers, which they say results in lower prices for customers.

At the same time, grocers have also scaled back as much as they could. Even Wal-Mart, once known for their “supercenters,” focused its energies instead upon releasing smaller-scale “marketplaces.”

With the U.S. Department of Agriculture expecting food prices to continue increasing come 2009, many are expecting that the current food retail market will also carry over to next year.

“It’s safe to speculate that a lot of growth in the grocery business in the years ahead is going to be focused on these smaller stores,” said Bill Bishop, a food retail consultant at Willard Bishop Consulting, to the Associated Press.