Nearly a quarter of Canadians cutting back on food purchases amid high inflation: survey

Amid soaring prices at grocery stores, a new survey has found that 24 per cent of Canadians have had to cut back on the amount of food they were buying.

The survey, conducted by Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab in partnership with Caddle, was conducted between Sept. 8 and 10 and involved 5,000 Canadians from coast to coast. Over the last year, 8.2 per cent said they've had to change their diet to save money on food and 7.1 per cent said they've skipped meals because of the cost of groceries.

"There is this sense of desperation out there. Twenty-four percent of Canadians are actually literally buying less food due to higher prices and of that number, almost 70 per cent are women. So it is highly likely that children are impacted by what's going on with food inflation," Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab, told CTV News Channel on Tuesday.

The survey also found that nearly three quarters of consumers were changing their buying habits in order to snag better deals at the grocery store. Of the respondents, 33.7 per cent said they were using more loyalty program points to pay for groceries in the last year.

In addition, 32.1 per cent said they were reading flyers more often and 23.9 per cent said they were using more coupons at the grocery store.