Hoping for a break on your grocery bill next year? Don't bank on it, new report suggests

Anyone hoping for a break on sky-high grocery bills should brace themselves for a shock in 2023, as the typical family's food bill for the year is predicted to go up by more than $1,000.

That's one of the main takeaways of the 2023 Food Price Report, an annual publication by Canadian researchers that looks at factors across the supply chain to attempt to predict what the cost of putting food on the table will be.

Last year, the report predicted that a typical family of four would would spend more than $14,000 to feed themselves for the year — an increase of $966 from the previous year's level and the biggest one-year jump in the 12-year history of the report.

"Last year we were predicting prices to go up by as much as seven per cent and many, many claimed that those predictions were alarmist," said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of food nutrition at Dalhousie University, who headed up the research team. "Yet here we are at 10 per cent."

While Canada's overall inflation rate topped out at eight per cent this summer, food prices went well beyond that pace, clocking in at a 10.1 per cent annual gain as of the end of October.

It's why instead of the $14,767 annual grocery bill forecast a year ago, the typical yearly receipt came in at $15,222.80 for 2022. That means last year's "alarmist" report was actually undershooting how things would play out by more than $400.

If those numbers are hard to swallow, prepare yourself for an upset stomach because all the factors that caused food bills to spike last year are expected to stick around into 2023. Charlebois and his fellow researchers say the typical grocery bill is on track to go up by another $1,065 from this year's record high level.

"There's absolutely no safe place at the grocery store," Charlebois said. "You can't really seek any sort of immunity against food inflation right now."

According to the report, the typical family of four, with two adults and two adolescent children, can expect to pay $16,288 to feed themselves next year. That's an increase of up to seven per cent, but some categories will be more expensive than others.

Not all types of food will go up at the same pace. Bakery items, meat and dairy should be in line with the overall rate, while fruit may be a comparable bargain at just five per cent. Vegetables, meanwhile, are expected to go up by as much as eight per cent.

That's not what Julie Heyland wants to hear. A mother of three in Calgary, she says she couldn't believe how much her grocery bill ballooned this year, even as the quality and quantity of food she was getting for her money didn't seem to increase.

She cuts back where she can, but ultimately those ever higher food bills have meant she's had to change her family's diet. "In order to stay within our budget now we eat a lot less meat and I definitely shop a lot more sales and plan my menus around what's on sale," she told CBC News in an interview. "We're eating a lot less meat and having more beans and a lot more rice and pasta during the week."

After a record-setting 2022, meat prices are not forecast to increase at a faster rate than food overall, but consumers should still brace themselves for prices to go up between five and seven per cent next year.

Jeffrey Bloom, a second-generation farmer who raises cattle on a farm in Turtleford, Sask., says he knows as much as anyone that prices for meat have skyrocketed this year, but the amount he gets per pound has barely budged, even as his costs have doubled.