While fuel might have gone down a tiny amount; rent, maintenance, parts, insurance (especially), wages (somewhat), and paperwork expenses have gone way up. In many cases, insurance has doubled or tripled in cost for less coverage. Most FBOs can't afford to hedge fuel like some airlines do. Their entire piston fleet of 50-100 airplanes won't suck as much fuel in a year as a single Boeing or Airbus airliner product does in a month.
See if you can get the CFI to work for free, that oughta cut costs by a few cents. You can claim that they'll be saving money by not having to pay taxes.
So yeah, learning to fly is expensive, even if you do it at the cheapest, dirtiest, ugliest operator you can find. But there is hope, if you save up a ton of money then pay for flight training, when you get a flying job you'll be able to afford eating. And if you get one of those CFI jobs where the clients demand you work for free, you'll be able to buy a box from another homeless person.