Purchasing power | Eating well costs $427 more per year

Rising food prices have obviously pushed the price of a nutritious grocery basket to new heights. For the past year, you have to pay $427 more per year to eat healthy in Montreal.

Stephanie Berube
The Press

$1.17 more

For more than 70 years, the Montreal Diet Dispensary has determined the price of the nutritious grocery basket. No one will be surprised to learn that eating well is now more expensive in Montreal: you have to pay $1.17 more per person, per day. Total daily bill: $8.90.

For low-income families, food can now represent 40% of the overall budget, or even sometimes more, says Julie Paquette, general manager of the Montreal Dispensary, who specifies that there are no processed products in their standard basket. .

“So you have to have culinary skills,” she says. More than ever.

The basket is evaluated with a scenario where you cook most of your meals, from fresh ingredients, and excludes cases where there are special food needs, such as that of a pregnant woman, in particular. Instead, she has to pay $9.25 a day for foodstuffs that meet her nutritional needs, according to the Dispensary.

typical basket

If we calculate for one year, a Montreal family of four would have to spend almost $13,000 on groceries, for the basic basket. A jump of 15% from October 2021 to July 2022.

“It’s not surprising and it agrees with what we hear of food banks that can no longer meet demand,” says François Fournier, researcher at the Observatoire québécois des inequalities, who is taking part in a discussion on the subject, this Wednesday, October 12, the day of the unveiling of the Cost of the Nutritious and Economical Food Basket Report 2021-2022.

“This is a very significant leap and it hurts less well-off households even more,” also notes the researcher.

Food insecurity

Because François Fournier specifies that it is not only the price of food that has increased: the share of the budget devoted to rent has also grown in recent months, which makes the choices at the grocery store even more complex, especially when ‘we are struggling to make ends meet.

Result: “There was a shift between people who were in a situation of mild food insecurity towards a moderate or severe situation,” says François Fournier.

Concretely, this means that people who were uncertain about the possibility of eating well now have to live with a reduction in the quality or quantity of the food they consume. Or both.

“People are hungry,” says François Fournier.

The National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) calculated between March 2020 and March 2022 an increase of 10% to 15% in the level of moderate or severe food insecurity in Quebec.

The end of the baloney…

To meet its nutritional needs, the Dispensary has determined 11 food categories, including vegetables, fruits, proteins from animal and vegetable sources.

The Dispensary team went into the field, to grocery stores, to really observe price fluctuations and product availability. They concluded that foods in 7 of the 11 categories under study increased by more than 10%.

They also wanted to paint a picture that reflects our reality in the kitchen, where most people don’t always prepare everything from every raw ingredient. We therefore find mixtures of frozen vegetables, canned applesauce and oatmeal.

On the other hand, less popular foods have been removed in 2022, such as liver or baked beans, as well as bologna sausage and individually wrapped slices of orange melted cheese, a prerogative of many’s childhood, but whose nutritional values are less exemplary than products in the same categories.

Fruit, very expensive

You will then fall back on the right pasta dish, a safe bet? Inflation has hit there too, since their price has doubled.

If you decide to cook more to absorb the costs, you will also have to rack your brains over some basic ingredients. The price of white flour increased by 225% during the observed period.

The price of fruit – fresh, canned or frozen – increased by 41% between October 2021 and July 2022, resulting in fruits and vegetables accounting for more than a third of the healthy grocery bill.

Behind these numbers are plenty of ups and downs in the same niche, notes the Report, which cites many examples, including fresh fruits and vegetables which are cheaper in season for those growing here.