Affordability of Canada's Food Guide: Current challenges amid COVID-19, War in Ukraine, and other world events.

Since the 2019 Canada Food Guide was released, there have been concerns raised over the cost of food, with an emphasis on the affordability of nutritious food. In this study, we evaluate the affordability of the 2019 Canada Food Guide in relation to the previous edition from 2007. As a result of the pandemic and other significant world events, many are feeling financial stress as prices in many areas of life rise, including housing, gas, and food. Our results show that it is more cost-effective, on average, for children and teens to follow the 2019 Canada Food Guide, but more expensive for adults, when compared to the 2007 edition.

Seeds and the city: a review of municipal home food gardening programs in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, home food gardening articles have saturated popular media outlets. Home food gardening is more popular than ever, and community gardens and community greenhouses are at capacity with long waiting lists for plots. Several local governments across the country are also participating in the food gardening craze. This study compares 19 municipal urban home food gardening programs that ran in 2020. These municipalities provided program participants with free gardening supplies and instructions on how to grow food at home. This study reveals a complicated relationship among municipalities, food gardening programs and household and community food security. The study also determines that the social and emotional challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic are somewhat alleviated through gardening. Ultimately, municipalities are limited in their policy capacities to adequately move the needle on food insecurity in Canada.

Supply Chain Responsiveness to a (Post)-Pandemic Grocery and Food Service E-Commerce Economy: An Exploratory Canadian Case Study

The focus of this study looks at the motivations and rationale from a national survey of over 7200 Canadians in November 2020 into why they use online services to purchase food. As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, food supply chains have been significantly altered. Consumers are purchasing foods with different dynamics, including when they buy in-person at groceries, at restaurants or at food service establishments. Elements of the food supply chain will be permanently altered post-pandemic. The study looks at a specific set of factors, captured in the survey, namely, consumer price sensitivity to the costs of online food purchasing, growing sustainability-related concerns over food packaging and waste, and product sensory experience related to how online purchasing changes from in-person food selection. The end goal, emerging from a case study, is insight into the strategies and preparedness with which CPGs, food services, and retailers can better manage the supply chain in their food product offerings in the post-pandemic era.

Canadian Consumers' Dining Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Channel Decisions in the Foodservice Industry

The past two years have been challenging for the restaurant industry in Canada and countries worldwide. This has led many casual and fine dining restaurants to adapt their business models to overcome the immediate and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to understand how COVID-19 has impacted Canadian consumers' on- and off-premise dining behaviors and how such behaviors vary among various sociodemographic groups, general knowledge of COVID-19, and telecommuting. Data were collected from a nationally representative consumer panel (n = 1091), from a survey administered online by Angus Reid. The results show that Canadian consumers increased their off-premise dining experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, which also varied across various sociodemographic groups. There was also an increased level of telecommuting during the pandemic, of which 68% started following the pandemic. However, telecommuting was negatively correlated with off-premise dining experiences during the pandemic. Canadian consumers perceived off-premise dining during the pandemic as reasonably expensive, lesser quality, and more convenient. The findings may have important implications for casual and dining restaurants in Canada to improve channel decisions and messaging as operators prepare for a full-service post-COVID-19. They can build on the infrastructure and capability that has been established during the COVID-19 pandemic to offer sustainable services beyond the pandemic.

Telecommuting and food E-commerce: Socially sustainable practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.

Telecommuting has become a dominant professional experience for many Canadian business and workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Telecommuting has several benefits that are separate from COVID-19. Two prevalent changes have been in regard to telecommuting and online food buying habits, both of which impact social wellbeing as a dimension of social sustainability. We discuss two exploratory surveys on the perception of telecommuting and food e-commerce. We found that while telecommuting has the potential to increase social wellbeing and the social sustainability of both urban and rural Canadian communities through a variety of mechanisms, food e-commerce does not offer similar returns. Instead, the prevalence of food e-commerce merely adds convenience to the lives of those who already have adequate food access while maintaining the status quo, or even worsening access for disadvantaged Canadians.

Increases in Household Food Waste in Canada as a Result of COVID-19: An Exploratory Study

The era of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a variety of individual lifestyle and behavioural changes, and could, therefore, potentially involve a shift towards more sustainable food systems. This research was conducted through an online survey of cross-sectional design. We surveyed 8272 Canadians in August of 2020. Participants answered questions about socio-demographic food waste amounts in kilograms, and food-waste-management behaviours. In this exploratory study, we assessed the relationships between socio-demographic variables, and self-reported food-waste behaviours through two-tailed significance testing. Results indicated that Canadian households self-reported an insignificant decrease in food waste during the pandemic. Respondents reported allowing food to expire, not utilizing leftovers, and not finishing meals. Understanding food-waste behaviour changes is key to designing effective mitigation strategies to reduce household food waste and to minimize the environmental consequences with which food waste is associated.

SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic and Food Safety Oversight: Implications in Canada and Coping Strategies.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has created enormous societal disruptions in the Western world, including Canada, with serious implications for food safety. Since the start of the pandemic, many scholars have investigated the issue of food safety through different lenses. In this review, two research thrusts were identified, the epidemiology of the virus and food safety oversight. Both were challenged by the pandemic in Canada and elsewhere. In this paper, we first present how Canada experienced the pandemic. We then present how epidemiology and food safety oversight were affected by the virus and how the spread exposed gaps in Canada's food safety system. We explain how Canada was not adequately prepared to face the food safety challenges posed by SARS-CoV-2. The review ends with an explanation on how risk perceptions will be altered by the pandemic in Canada and how food safety systems will adjust to better anticipate systemic risks in the future.

Pandemic Victory Gardens: Potential for local land use policies

This viewpoint examines citizen empowerment by gardening in times of crisis, namely, the adoption of the idea of Victory Gardens as a means of resistance to COVID-19. Fear of the collapse of the Canadian food chain supply at the beginning of the pandemic led to an increase in urban gardening. The government-created Victory Garden program of the Second World War urged citizens to contribute to the war effort by growing their own food. Social media use of hashtags associated with victory gardening are shown as citizen engagement or intent to engage with local gardening programs and home food production. While a scaled-down victory garden-like program might see a resurgence in urban geographies, if local planning policies and government-led community gardening efforts supported growth in this area.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Canada's Food Literacy: Results of a Cross-National Survey.

Several studies of food literacy emphasise the acquisition of critical knowledge over context. This evaluation looks at how COVID-19 impacted food literacy in a country affected by the global pandemic. To our knowledge, there has been no systematic research that would allow a better understanding of the impact of uncertainty or enhanced perceived risks generated by a global crisis on the prevalence of household food literacy. This study looks at food literacy from a perceptive of how an event that has domesticated many of them can alter knowledge and the relationship people have with food. A cross-national survey including 10,004 Canadians was conducted ten months after the start of the pandemic. Results show that Canadians have learned new recipes. Canadians have also taken up gardening and have relied on several sources to gather information. This study provides some evidence that Canadians have become more food literate because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but less significantly than anticipated. Practical and policy implications are presented as well as some future research directions.

Food packaging during the COVID-19 pandemic: Consumer perceptions.

While plastics play an important role in the safety, shelf-life, and affordability of many foods, their mismanagement as waste presents a serious environmental problem. In 2019, governments in Canada and globally were poised to take legislative action to curb the use of single-use plastics, with strong public support. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has since disrupted those initiatives as well as the public sentiment underlying them. The aim of our study is to measure changes in Canadian consumers' attitudes toward single-use plastic food packaging, from Summer 2019 to Summer 2020. The methodology relies on two, representative surveys of the Canadian population, carried out in May 2019 (n = 1,094) and in June 2020 (n = 977). Our measures explored potential impacts on consumer perceptions, driven both by new food safety concerns during the pandemic and also by increased price consciousness during a time of economic recession. We found that 55% of respondents were more concerned about food safety since COVID-19, and that 50% of respondents had become more price conscious when buying groceries. However, we found only a slight decline in motivation to reduce plastics - though with a sharper reduction among males. A stronger shift was seen in attitudes towards policy, where our results show a clear decline in support for tighter regulations or bans on single-use plastics, along with an increase in consumers' willingness to pay for biodegradable alternatives. These findings suggest a more difficult road ahead for legislative approaches, but also potential opportunities for market-based strategies and innovations in the food sector.