Food costs raising questions, changing behaviours
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/10/2023 (714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The link between rising food costs and consumption patterns in Canada is getting lots of media attention these days, and for good reason.
While the rate of food inflation has halved since the double-digit growth of last year, Statistics Canada’s September Consumer Price Index report still places it at 5.9 per cent above the same month last year.
In July, the agency also noted that grocery items have increased at a rate well above the average rate of inflation and, on balance, are 20 per cent above levels reported two years ago.
It’s expanding our language to include words such as “greedflation” and “shrinkflation.” It has elevated the game of finger-pointing to a blood sport, with politicians targeting grocery chains and popular columnists singling out the dairy farmers once again.
Most importantly, it’s changing consumer behaviours around food acquisition and consumption.
Hunger is rooted in three causes — a shortage of food, the absence of peace and a lack of spending power. Thankfully, two of the three don’t apply to Canada.
That said, it’s tragic bordering on criminal that the most vulnerable members of our society — the young, the old, the marginalized and the disabled — can’t afford to eat in a land of peace and plenty like this one.
Up to 15 per cent of Canadians struggle with food insecurity.
The annual HungerCount report released by Food Banks Canada this week says a record 1.9 million Canadians turned to food banks in the past year, a 32 per cent increase. One-third of those clients are children.
While inflation generally is forcing families to make different choices, it’s one thing to cut back on trips to the movies; it’s quite another to choose between feeding your family and having shelter.
There are no easy answers, but solutions start with the premise that no one deserves to go hungry. It’s also important to recognize that this is an issue of income more than price. Driving down food costs on the backs of producers and workers in the supply chain is not how we fix this.
Besides, it’s hard to argue that the changes prompted by higher food prices are all bad.
Another news item this week was about how shrinkflation has taken a bite out of Halloween candy portion sizes. Name me one teacher who’ll be upset about kids coming to school the next day with a little less sugar in their system.
The Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University surveyed consumers in September 2022 and 2023 about how they are responding to higher food prices.
The 2022 survey found 40.6 per cent indicated they were trying to waste less food. In 2023, that proportion jumped to 79.6 per cent. Less food waste at the consumer level trickles back through the supply chain, reducing the volume of resources — many of them non-renewable — consumed to produce, transport, process and market it.
If we are wasting less, we don’t need to buy as much.
The 2023 survey found people are buying less food from grocery stores, although it also found they are shopping around more. This is consistent with a Statistics Canada survey released early this spring. It found that in 2022, consumers spent more at the grocers, but they bought less.
Nearly half of the consumers surveyed said they are buying less meat. The dietary advice around eating meat is all over the map, but the general trend is towards eating less or eliminating it. Newly released research on red meat consumption found people who eat lots of it have a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Substituting nuts and legumes reduced that risk by 30 per cent.
Perhaps the most significant finding in this year’s Food Analytics survey was that nearly two-thirds of consumers are concerned that compromising on nutrition due to higher food prices could affect their long-term health.
You can interpret statistics many ways. But one spin on that finding is that we are waking up to the fact that food and nutrition are necessities we cannot afford to take for granted.
Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com

Laura Rance is editorial director at Farm Business Communications.
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