Achi news desk-
Grocery affordability has become a national crisis, pushing some to rely on food past its best before date, according to a new study surveying Canadian eating habits.
“It’s really happening across the country,” said Professor Sylvain Charlebois of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, which published the food security study that surveyed 9,109 Canadians.
“The findings reveal that 58 per cent are more attracted to eating food that would have a best before date either on that day or after,” he said, adding that eating food that might have to ruin to save money dangerously.
“Take, for example, animal proteins. We would be very careful,” warned Charlebois.
The Souls Harbor Rescue Mission, a community center in Halifax, feeds more than 600 people each day at multiple locations throughout Nova Scotia.
According to Cherry Claxton, the facility’s Chief Operating Officer, many of the people who eat at Souls Harbor often make desperate decisions when it comes to the food they eat.
“If their choice is to eat a can of beans that expired four years ago, or have two dollars to go and buy a new one, it’s not an option for them,” Claxton said.
Halifax resident Albert Kinslow regularly eats food he knows may be unsafe because he has no other choice.
“This is because of my limited financial situation and my ability to find affordable food,” Kinslow said.
The study, broken down by age group, asked Canadians whether they believed they had eaten a food in the past year – which was on or past its best before date – that might have made them sick .
The results for those who said “yes” are as follows:
- Generation Z: 10 percent
- Millennials, born between 1980 and 1996: 41 percent
- Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980: 24 percent
- Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964: 20 percent
- Canadians born before 1946: 10 per cent
Charlebois added that when it comes to best before and food expiration dates, many Canadians are pushing safety boundaries and engaging in risky eating habits that could lead to costly medical bills.
“If you get sick it’s going to cost you a lot more than that cabbage you didn’t throw out,” Charlebois said.
Methodology provided by Dalhousie University:
The survey was conducted in April 2024 and a total of 9,109 respondents. This number is a weighted and unweighted total, indicating that each respondent was counted once in the analysis, and any adjustments made to ensure representativeness did not change the total count of respondents. The margin of error for the survey, assuming a 95 per cent confidence level, is around 1.92 per cent. This means that the results of the survey are expected to be within ±0.63 percentage points of what would have been obtained if the entire population had been surveyed, 95 times out of 100.
