Leelanau County is the most expensive county in the country for food costs, according to a recent national study that’s making the rounds on social media and internet forums.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit think tank, produces a Family Budget Calculator each year. EPI says the calculator “measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living.” Costs tied to housing, food, childcare, heath care and more are drawn from diverse data sets and incorporated into the calculator.

This year’s calculator indicates that Leelanau County has the highest food cost of the more than 3,000 counties in the country. The study puts the cost of food (assuming food is purchased at a grocery and cooked at home) at $735 a month for one person or $2,122 a month for a family of four.

Other top counties for food costs included New York County, NY (Manhattan), Maui County and Marin County in California.

All told, the family budget calculator says a two-parent, two-child family in Leelanau needs $10,258 per month for the modest-yet-adequate target standard. Among the 83 counties in Michigan, Leelanau County has the highest cost of living. But median family income here is the 4th highest, so when cost of living is calculated relative to median income, the county ranks 29th.

EPI’s website states the food data is derived from USDA plans that serve as national standards for nutritious diets (what to eat) combined with price information that ultimately comes from Nielsen, a data and market research firm, via another study from a nonprofit called Feeding America. Nielsen measures the costs of Universal Product Code (UPC) barcoded food items in over 65,000 stores across the country, EPI says.

There are a handful of larger grocery stores in the county – Tom’s in Greilickville and Northport, Anderson’s Market in Glen Arbor, Leland Mercantile, and Hansen’s in Suttons Bay – with a smattering of smaller stores or operations that sell at least some groceries. The Ticker reached out several, but all either declined to comment or did not respond.

Some observers have expressed significant doubt about this data. Pricing is the same at the two Leelanau County Tom’s as it is at that company’s Grand Traverse County locations, as one example, despite Grand Traverse County having half the food cost in EPI’s price calculator. The calculator also shows all other counties in the region coming in at half or less of Leelanau’s cost.

There’s also the fact that many people in Leelanau County travel into Grand Traverse County for groceries, at least some of the time.

Zane Mokhider is director of data management and analysis at EPI. He could not speak to the Leelanau County data specifically, but could discuss the methodology and overall workings of the calculator.

Generally speaking, Mokhider says, the smaller the geographic region, the greater the chance that data tells an incomplete story. Data averages over a larger region are better for reaching conclusions, he says.

“Any time you’re looking at a small geographic area…there could be some idiosyncrasies,” he tells The Ticker.

Representatives at Feeding America, which pulled the Nielsen data that helps determine the food costs in EPI’s calculator, did not respond to The Ticker’s request for comment.