Walk through any major grocery store in Canada today and something has quietly changed. Shoppers linger longer near the sale tags. They flip packages to check prices before they check ingredients. They reach for the store brand without a second thought. It is not a trend born of preference it is survival arithmetic.
A sweeping new survey released April 28 by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab puts hard numbers to what many Canadians have felt in their wallets for months. The findings, published in the latest Canadian Food Sentiment Index, paint a portrait of a country that is not merely frustrated by food prices it is fundamentally reorganising its relationship with food around them.
The numbers are striking. More than 81 percent of the roughly 3,000 Canadians surveyed online in late February said that food was the household expense that had climbed the most over the past year. That figure dwarfs concerns about housing, transportation, utilities, and entertainment categories that would typically dominate a cost-of-living conversation.
Respondents reported spending an average of nearly $23 more on food each month compared to a year earlier, a 4.6 percent jump. More alarming still, 34 percent said they had to either dip into their savings or borrow money at some point over the past year simply to cover grocery bills a finding the report flags as evidence of “ongoing financial vulnerability among some households, for whom food has now become a critical budgetary concern.”
When asked what matters most when choosing what to buy, 45.5 percent of Canadians pointed to affordability. Nutrition came in a distant second at 24.9 percent, and taste trailed at 15.6 percent. The report’s conclusion was blunt: “Cost continues to outweigh all other food values by a wide margin.”
For Stacey Taylor, a research fellow with the lab, those numbers carry a warning.
“Affordability far outranking nutrition shows that Canadians are under significant financial stress to provide healthy meals for their families, which is concerning,” she said.
The concern is not abstract. When price takes precedence over nutritional value, diets shift and not necessarily for the better. Cheaper, more processed options can crowd out fresh produce, lean proteins, and whole grains that carry higher price tags but deliver greater health benefits.
The adaptation is showing up in concrete behaviour. Nearly 44.5 percent of Canadians said they are actively seeking out more discounts and sales. Others reported making greater use of coupons, investing more time hunting for deals online, switching to stores known for lower prices, and trading name brands for generic alternatives.
One of the more telling findings involves food-surplus apps platforms that connect consumers with unsold or near-expiry food at steep discounts, items that would otherwise be discarded. This year, for the first time, the survey asked about them, and 8.5 percent of Canadians said they are already using these tools. The report frames this as “indicating growing awareness of alternative savings channels” a niche behaviour quietly edging toward the mainstream.
Dining out, meanwhile, continues to take a back seat. As grocery bills climb, restaurant spending is among the first casualties, and the survey confirmed that Canadians are still pulling back on how often they eat at restaurants.
Perhaps nowhere is price pressure reshaping behaviour more visibly than on the dinner plate itself. Fewer Canadians now describe themselves as eating fully omnivorous diets, and more are migrating toward flexible, adaptable approaches to eating most notably the “flexitarian” model, which reduces but does not eliminate meat consumption.
With meat prices remaining elevated, the economics are driving the plate. “The drop in an omnivorous diet in favour of adaptable diets such as the flexitarian gives insight on how Canadians are managing their food budgets in difficult times,” Taylor noted.
There is a sliver of relief buried in the data. While Canadians are undeniably still feeling squeezed, fewer are convinced that prices are spiralling at the extreme rates they feared not long ago. In the fall of 2024, 40.3 percent of Canadians believed food prices had risen by more than 10 percent. By early 2025, that share had dropped to 29.7 percent.
Armağan Özbilge, a co-author of the report from Dalhousie University, sees this as a subtle but meaningful shift in the national mood.
“Canadians continue to feel pressure on their food budgets, but Spring 2026 data suggests a slight shift from anxiety to adaptation,” he said. “While affordability remains the dominant food value, consumers appear to be moderating their expectations for inflation through versatile strategies from using food-rescue apps and seeking discounts to adjusting dietary choices and spending habits.”
In other words, Canadians have not stopped worrying. They have simply gotten better at coping.
The survey also measured the reach of a relatively new policy tool: Health Canada’s front-of-package nutrition warning symbols. The results suggest these labels carry real weight at the shelf. Some 63.4 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to buy a product carrying a health warning label, including 25.4 percent who said they would be significantly less likely to do so.
Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Dalhousie’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, believes the combination of cost-conscious shoppers and sharper labelling is forcing a reckoning in the food industry.
“Affordability continues to define the Canadian food economy, but policy tools like front-of-package labelling are accelerating change at the shelf,” he said. “Consumers are making faster, more decisive choices, and that will force the industry to adapt either through reformulation or repositioning.”
Reformulation means actually changing what is inside a product its ingredients or nutritional profile. Repositioning means rethinking how it is priced, packaged, or pitched to buyers. Either way, the message from the checkout line is clear: Canadian consumers are no longer passive in the face of high prices. They are adapting, strategising, and expecting the industry to do the same.
