Rising food prices leading to unhealthy preferences

Toronto, February 10: A report issued yesterday by the Heart and Stroke Foundation has put forward the extreme variability in prices of health foods across Canada, with some communities having to shell out twice and at times six times higher for the same product than in others.

The cost of foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean meat showed wide variations from one city to the other and even within the urban areas too. Interestingly, prices were higher in the economically challenged areas of Jane and Finch in northwest Toronto. This is in comparison to the prices in Scarborough in eastern Toronto.

Ironically, cost of junk foods like cookies, potato chips and soft drinks, whose consumption should be restricted to minimum, showed very little variation.

According to the heart health charity, quite a few natives of Canada are missing out on healthy foods because of their high prices. And the charity feels that the government should step in to even out the prices of such foods.

Dr. Beth Abramson, a spokesperson of the foundation remarked, “Eating healthy is a key factor in preventing heart disease and as a cardiologist I counsel my patients on this daily. This report by the foundation should be a wake-up call that healthy eating is potentially out of reach for many Canadians.”

Abramson and others are amazed to see how the government can charge a uniform price for alcohol across an entire province but not for a staple food such as milk that costs double in Wolfville N.S. than it does in the Vancouver area.

The findings on the cost of healthy food items were the focus of this year’s annual heart health report card of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. The foundation validated its point of view with data obtained from a national poll in which 1400 people took part. The poll indicates that 47 percent of Canadians at times miss out on fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grain, dairy products and lean meat due to their towering prices.

Vice-President of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributers, Dave Wilkes, in reference to the volunteers who gathered data for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, remarked, “I don't want to disparage or get into a my-data’-better-than-their-data type conversation. It's just, to use an analogy - a pollster certainly wouldn't base conclusions on 66 people.”

He further added, “We don't want to leave Canadians with the impression that healthy choices are not affordable. Because they certainly are. Canadians benefit from one of the most affordable grocery baskets in the developed world.”

In October 2008, volunteers in 66 cities went shopping with a list of healthy foods provided to them by the foundation. As there is not any grocery store chain that sells across Canada, the shoppers were told to purchase only from a national or regional grocery chain, but not from a discount grocery store.

The findings showed that remote Northern communities were the most expensive places to buy food.

Apple prices were 90 cents in Peterborough, Ont. and $7.94 in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. The price of 520 grams of cheddar cheese was $14.61 in Thunder Bay, Ont. and $4.99 in Barrie, Ont.

Marco Di Buono, Director of Research for the Ontario chapter of the Heart and Stroke Foundation said, “It was cheaper to buy lean ground beef in the North than it was in Ottawa. That kind of price variation is inexplicable.”