Canadians Buy Fewer Groceries Due to Inflation: Statistics Canada

People shop for produce at the Granville Island Market in Vancouver on July 20, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)

Canadians are spending more on food items but are buying less groceries overall as they try to manage household budgets and cope with price inflation, says a new report by Statistics Canada.

The report, released on July 26, says many families are changing how and where they shop for food.

“In 2022, current dollar sales at food and beverage stores were up 5.8 percent,” said the report titled “Switching Stores to Cope With High Inflation,” as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

“When measured on a volume basis, sales were down 3.6 percent.”

The findings were based on a special household survey in 2022 that asked Canadians how they were coping with higher living costs.

“During the spring months, before inflation had peaked, nearly three in four Canadians reported that rising prices were affecting their ability to meet day-to-day expenses,” the analysts wrote.

The report said consumers were making “increased use of coupons” while also making more trips to “warehouse clubs, supercentres and other general merchandise retailers” in a bid to save money.

“Before the pandemic, food sales at food and beverage stores accounted for 73.0 percent of all retail food purchases,” said the report, noting that this share stood at 74.3 percent in early 2021—just as food prices began to steadily rise.

“As prices rose, the share of retail food sales accounted for by food and beverage stores began to decline, falling to about 70 percent in late 2022.”

“At the same time, the share of food sales at general merchandise stores has risen, increasing from 21.6 percent in early 2021 to 25.9 percent in late 2022,” it added.

Fruits and Vegetables

The analysts said that although food inflation has eased in recent months, prices for many grocery items have continued to rise month after month and, on balance, are 20 percent above levels reported two years earlier.

“During 2022, the sticker shock in grocery aisles became remarkably broad-based, with elevated price growth—year-over-year price increases of 10 percent or more—affecting a larger share of overall food expenditures,” they wrote.

“This included spending on many household staples,” they added.

A report published on June 12 by the Office of Audit and Evaluation at Health Canada said that inflation woes have taken precedence over healthy eating for most Canadians.

The auditors noted that only a quarter of the population is consuming the minimum daily servings of fruit and vegetables recommended by the country’s official food guide, which was launched in 2019 by the federal government’s Office of Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

The 2019 food guide recommended that Canadians avoid luncheon meats, fruit juice, sugary breakfast cereals, store-made cakes and cookies in favour of more raw fruit, seeds and whole grains, fish, eggs, and poultry.

Prices for most of the recommended foods have increased sharply since 2019. For example, Canadians are paying on average 23 percent more for chicken breasts, 29 percent more for oranges, 32 percent more for apples, 36 percent more for eggs, and 44 percent more for carrots, according to Statistics Canada’s Monthly Average Retail Prices for Selected Products data released at the time of the June 12 report.