The Provincial Government released the updated cost of a 2021 Newfoundland and Labrador Nutritious Food Basket last week. It highlights the costs of nutritious food in our province.
The Nutritious Food Basket is a standardized tool used to calculate the weekly cost of meeting the nutrient requirements for a family of four (specifically, an adult man and woman, a teenage boy, and a young girl). The food basket consists of 61 foods from the 2019 Canada Food Guide and is based on the National Nutritious Food Basket. The Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency collects data about the costs of these foods around the province during October and November of each year.
It’s important to note that the 2021 basket is a new measure, with different foods in it than in previous years (to align with the food guide), and so isn’t directly comparable to pre-2021 data.
In October 2021 it cost an average of $282 for a family of four to purchase enough nutritious food for a week. That's $1,128 per month. Of course, that cost changes depending on where you live in the province. The highest was $392 per week ($1,568 per month) on the north coast of Labrador and the lowest at $242 per week ($968 per month) in urban parts of Central Newfoundland. The full data table gives the average food basket cost for each provincial health region and 10 different place-based costs from around the province.
Something to keep in mind is that this data is from before the inflation and cost-of-living crisis we are currently experiencing. The prices for October/November 2022 will likely be much higher. Work is already underway to calculate and release the 2022 data.
Putting the Nutritious Food Basket in Context
One informative way to look at these numbers is to put them alongside monthly income support rates since we know that households on social assistance are much more likely to experience food insecurity.
Right now, a family of four (the same size used to calculate the Food Basket costs) would receive a base rate of $779 per month from income support — $1,151 if they've received the maximum rent/mortgage supplement. Based on this maximum amount, a family of four in St. John's would spend 93% of their income support cheque just on food to afford what’s in the nutritious food basket. A family of four on the north coast of Labrador would have to spend all of their income support and then some.
Income support amounts are only one part of the income picture for folks who rely on them, of course. There are also things like tax credits, child benefit allowances, and supplemental payments. Even in the best-case scenario, though, with every benefit maxed out at 2021 levels, a family on income support would still need to spend between 45% and 70% of their total income on food to afford the nutritious food basket.
We also know that almost half of the food-insecure folks in this province are employed, and looking at the cost of the nutritious food basket helps us understand why. A family of four with both parents working full time for the minimum wage (an unrealistic option for many) would be spending between 30% and 40% of their take-home employment income on a nutritious food basket. For most families, this burden would be reduced further through the receipt of child benefits - for an example family that benefit works out to around $800/month. With that factored in, in areas with the lowest food costs, some families living on two full-time minimum-wage incomes would be able to afford the Nutritious Food Basket spending about 20% of their total income on food.
None of these are sustainable scenarios - especially for folks on income support. We know that food is often near the bottom of the long list of household expenses, and that people compromise on food spending to afford fixed costs like rent, heat, and light. We also know that for minimum-wage earners, steady work at a predictable 40 hours a week can be a real challenge to find.
We also know that caregivers are more likely to skip meals, eat less, or eat food with lower nutritional values (e.g. less fresh vegetables) so that their children can eat better. Income support at its current level is simply not enough to make sure everyone has enough food and can take care of their other needs (e.g. prescription medications), even alongside other benefits. These calculations are also based on a nuclear family that doesn’t reflect the reality in many households, that have (e.g.) more than two children or care for aging relatives.
Taking this all in, a few things are clear.
First, we (like other provinces, unfortunately) have legislated poverty by having income floors that are well below what would meet people’s basic needs.
Second, this gap between income and the cost of necessities will only get worse as benefits and wages fail to keep up with inflation. Measurements, like the Nutritious Food Basket, will soon reflect this as they start to capture the price inflation we’re seeing.
Third, the cost of a Nutritious Food Basket helps us wrap our hands around what liveable income floors might look like. A “rule of thumb” often used in personal budgeting is that food should max out at 15-20% of a household’s budget — so that means a total income (including employment and benefits) of $70,000 to $100,000 per year for the family of four used to model the nutritious food basket, depending on where they live in N.L. That would be a big change for many people in this province, and a big goal to think about when we talk about what true food security might look like.
