Food consumption

Despite the recent popularity of low-carbohydrate diets, Canadians continued to fill their plates with pasta, bakery products and cereal-based snacks last year.

New data show each Canadian ate 66.8 kg of cereal products in 2004, up from 65.8 kg in 2003.

Canadians' fondness for grain-based products has been steadily increasing over the past decade. While most of these products are made of wheat flour, rice consumption also continues to swell.

Canadians are now eating twice as much rice as they did in 1990. On average, each Canadian consumed 7.3 kg of rice in 2004.

While Canadians ate more cereal products in 2004, they trimmed their consumption of beef.

Beef consumption fell in 2004 to 13.6 kg per person, a 4.0% drop. Due to a slight increase in pork consumption, red meat consumption rose to 27.1 kg per person, up 1.0%.

Beef consumption remains just above where it was in 2002, before borders closed to Canadian cattle. Despite the positive test for BSE in a single breeder cow in northern Alberta in May 2003, beef consumption actually rose 5% that year as consumers rallied behind the beef industry.

Price also had an impact on the decrease in beef consumption in 2004. While the price for ground beef stayed comparable to pre-border closure levels, prices for some premium cuts of beef rose substantially during the 2004 barbequing season and remained fairly high into the fall.

Pork consumption rebounded slightly to 11.6 kg per person in 2004, up 6.3% from 2003. Although pork consumption had been decreasing slightly for the last few years, it faced a major challenge in 2003. Pork consumption dropped 9.7% that year as Canadians consumed more beef.

Overall, red meat consumption has been on the decline since 1976. Currently, Canadians consume 8% less red meat than at the beginning of the new millennium.

Poultry consumption, which has been slowly climbing over time, also dipped in 2003 before rising in 2004 to 13.5 kg per person.

The supply of poultry was threatened in 2004 as some farms in British Columbia were affected by avian flu. However, poultry from other regions met consumer demand. Even so, the tight supplies put some pressure on the price of chicken as it rose just over 6% from 2003.

After falling for three years, milk consumption rose slightly to 63.2 litres per person in 2004. Though 2% milk, at 29.6 litres, constituted nearly half of all milk consumed, 1% milk continued to make inroads, from virtually non-existent prior to 1990 to 13.2 litres in 2004.

Canadians may be conscious of the fat content of their milk, but they still like their table cream. Each consumed 1.9 litres of table cream in 2004 up 8.6% from 2003. Thanks to steady increases, consumption of table cream has almost quadrupled over the past decade.

Canadians' consumption of coffee has remained strong for the past six years and many take theirs with cream. Canadians drank 93.7 litres of coffee each in 2004, up 10 litres from 1997.

Available on CANSIM: tables 002-0010, 002-0011 and 002-0019.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey numbers, including related surveys, 3403, 3404, 3407, 3430 and 3475.

The 2004 issue of Food Statistics, Vol. 4, no. 1 (21-020-XIE, free) is now available online. From the Our products and services page, under Browse our Internet publications, choose Free, then Agriculture.

More detailed information can be found on the Canada Food Stats CD-ROM, (23F0001XCB, $81/$129), which will soon be available. This is an easy-to-use system that provides access to a broad spectrum of data, preformatted reports and articles on food and the food industry.

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Kim Boyuk (613-951-2510; or toll-free: 1-800-465-1991; kimberley.boyuk@statcan.gc.ca), Agriculture Division.