Four out of five Canadians are buying less produce, meat, and dairy

Beginning this month, the Canadian Dairy commission began increasing the price of the milk, farmers are paid to make to more than 8%. In B.C., that means a 10 cent deposit on milk containers.

PGI market says it’s constantly negotiating with suppliers. However, sometimes that doesn’t pan out as many orders come in unfilled.

“Probably 20% of it just doesn’t show up. Like it gets on our short sheets, we just aren’t getting it. And no reason behind it really either other than just manufacture shorts.” said Sarabyn

Inflation isn’t just hurting people’s wallets. Their diets are taking a toll as well.

“That is very worrisome from a chronic disease perspective because inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption is linked very closely to increase risk to type two diabetes, for certain types of cancer, for heart disease, and other chronic conditions.” said Rita Koutsodimos, Executive Director at the BC Alliance for healthy living.

In their own research, the BCAHL found similar results. They found that 33% of British Columbians say healthy food is not affordable. In the north, they say that 39% of Northern BC residents are eating less homemade meals.

“We’re really worried about the pressure it puts on low income families.” said Koutsodimos.

Though, even with products coming off the shelves faster than they can be restocked. Customers are still flocking to the smaller operations.

“We’ve been somewhat lucky with the bigger stores having their issues. We have a lot more people coming in here looking for this stuff. The word of mouth, people on Facebook, and social media. Letting other people know that we have things that the big stores don’t have has helped us out quite a bit.” said Sarabyn.

The BCAHL says there are some mitigation efforts that customers can take right now.

“Thinking about cheaper protein sources like lagums, eggs, those can really stretch your food budget. And really rely less on pre-packaged food.” said Koutsodimos.

The alliance adds that government needs to step up quickly to deal with food security as inflation rises.

by Oli Herrera

Four out of five Canadians are buying less produce, meat, and dairy

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