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By The Canadian Press

Prices for healthy food a growing concern for Canadians

Dec 31, 2019 | 10:50 AM

OTTAWA — A new survey says most Canadians believe food prices are becoming less affordable with the cost of vegetables identified as one of the main worries.

The Angus Reid poll done for the agri-food lab at Dalhousie University found that 87 per cent of respondents agreed that food prices are increasing faster than their household income.

The inflation rate for October, the most recent date available, was 1.9 per cent. Food prices, however, climbed 3.7 per cent compared with a year ago, with fresh fruit and vegetables more than seven per cent higher than a year earlier.

The survey gathered responses from more than 15-hundred people across the country in early December and found that vegetable prices were the top-ranked concern, listed by 69 per cent of respondents, followed by fruits (60 per cent) and meat (54 per cent).

A slight majority (53 per cent) said they intend to change their habits to save money.

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Among the most common ideas were eating less often at restaurants and looking for grocery discounts or coupons.

According to the polling industry’s generally accepted standards, online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.