The Agri-Food Analytics Lab (AFAL) at Dalhousie University says Canadians are spending more money on food.<\/p>\n
According to the research institution, 81 per cent of Canadians identified food as the expense that increased the most in the past year.<\/p>\n
In its 2026 forecast, the lab predicted a four to six per cent increase in expenses. For a family of four, this means an annual uptick of more than $1,000.<\/p>\n
Sylvain Charlebois, AFAL\u2019s director, says that this has an impact on what Canadians choose to purchase at the supermarket, moving away from higher-priced items such as meat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are starting to see a shift towards different diets like vegetarianism, pescetarianism, and flexitarianism as well. That\u2019s becoming more popular in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds that this shift is very likely here to stay, as he does not see any decrease in grocery prices in the near future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not going to stop. I mean, we actually do believe that food inflation bottomed in March, but now we are expecting food inflation to start rising again, unfortunately, due to energy costs and the conflict in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlebois\u2019 assessment is backed by a recent StatsCan report that says, compared to last year, fresh produce went up about eight per cent.<\/p>\n
The government agency says that it is the biggest increase of its kind in three years.<\/p>\n
It explains that the increase is mostly due to lower imports from other countries and higher energy prices due to the conflict in Iran.<\/p>\n
However, Canadians are finding ways to save money by doing their homework.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have discovered new stores, especially independent stores,\u201d Charlebois explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are naturally drawn to major grocers, major outlets, but they are independents that actually do offer some good deals, and Canadians have actually noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says some independent retailers are accessing rejected products from major brands at 10 to 25 per cent of the original price and are able to offer major discounts to consumers.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With files from John Ackermann.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Agri-Food Analytics Lab (AFAL) at Dalhousie University says Canadians are spending more money on food. According to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-636633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}