Food Costs for the Average Family of 4 Will Exceed $300 Weekly in 2023: Report

An average family of four can expect to spend more than $300 per week on food this year, according to Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

The estimates for 2023 food costs are detailed in the newest issue of Canada’s Food Price Report, which Charlebois co-authored.

Food prices will be even higher than they were in 2022, with a predicted five to seven percent increase this year, mostly affecting vegetables, dairy, and meat, Charlebois told The Epoch Times. An average family of four—a man and woman aged 31-50, a boy aged 14-18, and a girl aged 9-13—will spend $16,288.41 on food this year.

This is an increase of up to $1065.60 from what families spent in 2022, which was a little over $15,000 on food for the year. A typical family spends 16 percent of their total expenses on food, says Charlebois.

For the foreseeable future, Charlebois said not to expect prices to come down for most food items. For the last 12 months, the food inflation rate has exceeded general inflation.

“It’s really a concern. There are two necessities of life: shelter and food. Those are the two things people need in order to survive. So obviously higher prices are a big concern,” says Charlebois.

“This is probably the most expensive groceries have ever been,” he added. “But that’s the impact of inflation.”

He said 2023 is going to be another challenging year, especially in the first part of the year.

“Most of the increase will happen in the first half of 2023,” he says.

Food Affordability

For 13 years, Dalhousie University, the University of Guelph, The University of Saskatchewan, and the University of British Columbia have produced an annual forecast of grocery price trends in Canada’s Food Price Report. Last year, the program forecast a food increase of five to seven percent.

Food costs ultimately exceeded predictions, with an increase of over 10 percent. According to Charlebois, food prices have not increased to this extent in Canada for over forty years, and 2022 was the worst year on record for price increases.

The report looks at nine key categories rather than individual foods, for example, it predicts prices for bakery, dairy, fruits, meat, restaurants, seafood, and vegetables. The 2023 report forecasts that overall food prices will increase by five to seven percent. Vegetables will increase the most, by six to eight percent, and bakery, dairy, and meat are predicted to increase from five to seven percent.

The increase is attributed to supply chain issues during COVID-19, labour shortages, and inflation.

Charlebois notes he sits on the board of Second Harvest in Toronto, which is Canada’s largest food bank. “Traffic has gone up, and we are having a harder time getting food,” he says.

As prices have gone up, the grocery stores that typically donate their surplus to the food bank, donate less, as they are more careful with inventories and how they manage their ordering, says Charlebois.

Charlebois also says grocers this year “have to be careful, because their relationship with the public has changed.”

He says Canadian consumers are skeptical of grocery stores and “believe that they are being gouged.” Although his research team did not see any evidence of abuse by grocers over the last several years, he suggests grocers have to work on “optics,” especially as this year, grocery executives received record bonuses.

The report also notes that the 2022 HungerCount, published by Food Banks Canada, stated that in 2022, the use of food banks increased in Canada by 15 percent.

In 2021, an estimated 5.8 million Canadians, including 1.4 million children living in the ten provinces, were considered to be living in food-insecure households, according to Statistics Canada. The figures do not include First Nations reserve residents, homeless people, or those living in remote northern areas. In 2021, an estimated 30.7 percent of Indigenous Peoples not living on reserves were considered food insecure, according to the University of Toronto Food Insecurity Policy Research program (PROOF).