Nearly 40% of B.C. residents are changing how they eat because food is too expensive
A new poll suggests that many B.C. residents are changing their eating habits to combat cost-of-living concerns.
Research Co. and United Way BC recently teamed up to survey over 800 adults in B.C. between April 24 and April 26 of this year, asking residents a number of questions about their finances.
Compared to two years ago, 31 per cent of residents said they are more stressed now about having enough money to make it to the end of the month. Further, many B.C. residents reported changing their food and eating habits to deal with rising food costs.
The survey suggests that 37 per cent of B.C. residents said they have switched packaged food brands to generic (and lower-priced) alternatives in the past couple of months, and 35 per cent have changed their diet to avoid products that have become more expensive.
“Just over two-in-five British Columbians aged 18 to 34 (41 per cent) acknowledge modifying their diet because specific products have become unaffordable,” said Mario Canseco, President of Research Co, in a release.
He added that this is also noteworthy among those aged 35 to 54 (36 per cent) and aged 55 and older (28 per cent).
In April, Daily Hive Urbanized interviewed Sean McCormick, the vice president of business development at Moneris Data Services, a commerce provider that accounts for a third of spending transactions in Canada.
In the first three months of 2026, Moneris reported that consumer spending on groceries went up by three per cent, less than the 5.4 per cent food inflation reported by Statistics Canada.
McCormick said consumers have been adapting to the “eye-watering grocery inflation,” and that since 2020, the average transaction size at grocery stores has only grown slightly in the last 18 months.
“They’ve been substituting the luxury brands, or the more expensive brands, for the cheaper and discount brands,” he said. “So they’ve been able to maintain, basically, for all intents and purposes, the same transaction size when they check out. They’re just filling their basket with lower-priced goods, and in other cases, fewer goods.”
Times are tough
The Research Co. survey also found that 21 per cent of respondents said they’ve cut back on lunches for themselves, and 23 per cent said they or other household members had to reduce the size of their meals over the past couple of months for affordability reasons.
Meanwhile, 15 per cent of respondents reported skipping meals altogether, and 13 per cent said they’ve accessed food from a community organization.
Demand at B.C. food banks has increased by five per cent in the first three months of 2026, according to Food Banks BC. Since 2019, the organization, which is a provincial association of food banks, has observed about an 80 per cent increase in the number of food bank visits in B.C.
Dan Huang-Taylor, Food Banks BC’s executive director, told Daily Hive Urbanized in April that one of the biggest trends in demand is people who work full-time but still need to turn to food banks. He said people’s wages are not keeping up with the rising costs of essentials.
Nicole Mucci, the media communications manager at Union Gospel Mission, an organization that gives out emergency food hampers in the Downtown Eastside, also recently told Daily Hive Urbanized that they’ve seen demand shoot up. In 2025, they saw a 114 per cent increase in demand for food hampers.
“It feels like a lot of families are really feeling the squeeze right now. We’re noticing more moms and moms with small kids trying to access their services than ever before. And I think that really does come down to the fact that the cost of living has just increased substantially for folks,” Mucci said.