Goodbye steak, hello mung beans! Overheated food prices have Canadians buying less meat

At the dinner table in Susana Tobar's household, meat is usually the star of the show.

The family of committed meat lovers from Calgary loves to fire up the barbecue for a nice steak dinner, she said, and chicken is in frequent rotation, too.

But these days their meals look a lot different.

"So let's say instead of just eating, like, the chicken on the plate with the salad, we try to make it with pasta so we have more food." With their animal proteins cut up into little pieces, she said, that pasta dish might last for two or three days.

Their Costco trips have changed since prices shot up.

"We used to buy everything there, like chicken, shrimps, salmon, pork as well … five or six types of things," she told Cost of Living. Now they spend the same amount but only take home three of those proteins "because everything is so expensive now."

That's a pattern playing out in kitchens and on grocery lists across the country. According to a poll conducted by Ipsos in July, 47 per cent of meat eaters polled said they planned to cut back on their meat consumption this year, with cost the most common reason for doing so.

Now food researchers are saying that after years of being told to eat our veggies, inflation could be the reason we actually do it.

Kathy Perrotta, vice-president of market strategy and understanding at Ipsos, has been tracking what Canadian consumers eat and drink for more than 20 years.

Since Ipsos first started asking Canadians about their meat-eating intentions in 2018, there's been a 25 per cent increase in respondents answering that they plan to cut back.

And their reasons for doing so have shifted. Even in 2021 and 2022, said Perrotta, "health [and] environmental concerns top the reasons that people were looking to cut back on meat intake.

"But over the past year, interestingly, the cost of meat has risen to the No. 1 position — and not really surprising, given the pressure on the wallet these days with regard to rising interest rates, rising food prices."

Perrotta said these factors may mean we've arrived at an "inflection point" where the plant-based food movement will have a resurgence, like it did prior to the pandemic when there was a lot of interest in plant-based meat alternatives such as Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger.

Food economist Mike von Massow said it's not surprising that people are changing their food habits in response to higher prices.