Snack to school healthily

It’s back to school for 5.8 million children and youth across Canada, and that means millions upon millions of lunches and snacks will be packed in the weeks and months ahead.

With that in mind, let’s open our lunch box of food data to share with everyone.

Canadian farmers provide lots of fresh, healthy, tasty lunch box options

School starts at a great time of year for returning students: many Canadian-grown lunch box staples—such as apples and carrots—are in season. The wheat grown to make bread, pasta and couscous is also ripening in the fields. Of course, there is also delicious healthy food available year-round, such as dairy products.

How about them apples

Canadian farmers sold 377 432 metric tonnes of apples in 2024, up 6.1% from a year earlier. Still, this was well below the levels of the late 2000s, when sales topped 400 000 tonnes a year, reaching a record-high 446 367 tonnes in 2007.

Here’s a quiz for the math whizzes out there. How many apples are there in 377 432 metric tonnes? For simplicity’s sake, considering that a medium apple weighs about 100 grams, that makes just under 3.8 billion apples. That’s enough to feed every school-aged kid in Canada with more than three apples a day for every school day this coming academic year.

In 2024, apples were grown and sold commercially in eight provinces, with Ontario and Quebec combined accounting for just over two-thirds (72.6%) of national production. Nova Scotia was the largest apple-producing province in Atlantic Canada, while British Columbia topped production out west.

Cheese, please

Cheese is another lunch box favourite since it keeps well at room temperature for a few hours. Cheddar (41 560 tonnes) topped mozzarella (38 592 tonnes) in cheese production in the first quarter of 2025, while cream cheese (9 758 tonnes) ranked a distant third.

Yes to yogurt

Yogurt is a healthy creamy delight and lunch box staple, especially when paired with fruit. It is also incredibly popular among Canadians, with dairies producing more yogurt (99 808 tonnes) than all other speciality and cottage cheeses combined (85 553 tonnes) in the first quarter of 2025.

If you pack yogurt in your lunch box, however, it must be kept cool to stay safe to eat.

Carrots pack crunch

Adding some crunch to your lunch box is never a bad thing, and carrots are a healthy and safe crunch option. Canadian farmers sold 345 768 tonnes of carrots in 2024, up 2.9% from a year earlier but well below the record carrot haul of 2011, when 424 907 tonnes were sold.

When it comes to carrot production, Ontario and Quebec pack the most crunch, accounting for three-quarters (75.4%) of national sales. Prince Edward Island claimed the carrot top spot in Atlantic Canada, while British Columbia wore the carrot crown out west.

Wheat for bread, pita, pasta and couscous

Canadian farmers grow the wheat, and millers turn it into a powder to be used in making all kinds of bread, like fancy French bread and plain old white bread, as well as pita and naan bread. Millers produced 2.3 million tonnes of milled wheat flour (excluding durum) in 2024, the third consecutive year where production of wheat flour (excluding durum) topped the 2.3 million tonne mark.

Speaking of durum, it’s a special type of wheat that is used to make pasta and couscous, both excellent lunch box options. In 2024, millers produced 170 000 tonnes of durum flour, down 1.2% from a year earlier and 7.6% below the record high produced in 2003.

Flour milled in Canada almost always stays in Canada. From 2019 to 2023, an average of 87.9% of the total supply of wheat flour in Canada went to domestic use.

The good news for lovers of all things wheat is that the average retail price for 2.5 kilograms of flour fell 10.3% year over year in 2024.

Smooth hummus for spreading or dipping

Hummus is a smooth spread or dip that is made from chickpeas, tahini (a sesame paste) and garlic. While we don’t grow sesame in Canada, we more than make up for that by producing lots of chickpeas and garlic.

Chickpea production rose for the third consecutive year in 2024, up 80.2% year over year to 286 768 tonnes, the highest level of production since 2018, when 311 300 tonnes were grown. Over four-fifths (84.7%) of the chickpeas grown in Canada in 2024 came from Saskatchewan fields.

Another key ingredient in hummus is garlic. In 2024, Canadian farmers sold a record-high 1 996 tonnes of garlic, up 3.4% from a year earlier and four times more than was sold in 2002.