Food is looking like gold. “Costs at the grocery store are dramatically taking a toll,” said Derek Wilson, chief strategy officer for Silver Key Senior Services. “It was already bad with people on a fixed income having to make choices of ‘Do I buy medicine or gas or pay the utility bill or buy food?’”

Inflation has pushed food prices so high that King Soopers no longer sells $5 gift cards, Silver Key recently discovered, as the organization turned an eye toward the holidays.

Through its Bountiful Bags Thanksgiving food drive, seniors receive free staples for preparing a traditional holiday meal.

Woven bags are stuffed with donated cranberry sauce, dry dessert mix, dry stuffing, instant mashed potatoes, gravy mix and canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup and yams.

A protein product is missing, to be purchased by the recipient with an included gift card.

For the first time, the card is redeemable for $10 worth of protein or a substitute food item instead of the usual $5, Wilson said.

That’s pushed the cost to fill each bag from $20 to $25, he said.

“Our big fear is that if we don’t receive enough food, we’ll have to buy food in bulk to fill the bags,” Wilson said, “and this year it’s going to be tough.”

To meet its goal of distributing 1,300 bags to needy seniors, Silver Key’s annual food drive began this week and runs through Oct. 31.

Holiday staples can be dropped off at:

• Silver Key, 1605 S. Murray Blvd. (9 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday-friday)

• The Promenade Shops at Briargate, 1885 Briargate Parkway, suite 503, management office between Pottery Barn and Paper Source

(8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-friday)

• Scheels, 1226 Interquest Parkway (all hours of operation)

• King Soopers, 3250 Centennial Blvd.; King Soopers Ridgeview Marketplace, 6030 Stetson Hills Blvd.; and King Soopers, Marketplace at Briargate, 9225 N. Union Blvd. (all hours of operation)

Silver Key usually obtains most of the food for its Thanksgiving giveaway from Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado, Wilson said, and supplements the bags with community donations. But supply chain problems have led to a dearth of the basics, he said.

“This year Care and Share has been able to give us very few of the items,” he said, “so we’re very dependent on donations from the community.”

Eating properly improves seniors’ lives and is particularly important during the holidays, Wilson said.

“It’s good nutrition for the body but also medicine to the soul when people can have the traditional meal and not Vienna sausages out of a can that day,” he said.

The need for supplemental food for seniors’ households is “great and growing,” Wilson said, adding that the agency is seeing people who have never asked for assistance in the past.

“It’s like the perfect storm right now,” Wilson said. “If things don’t turn around, I’m concerned about what kind of collapse we’ll see and what the safety net is going to be able to do.”

Financial donations may be made at silverkey.org/donate.