A new, original term has been coined by Canada’s leading expert in the food supply chain and food economy, Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab (AFAL) director, Sylvain Charlebois. ‘Shelflation’ is what he calls a new phenomenon in which foods spoil on the shelves…
Fresh produce is arriving on store shelves less fresh than
it usually does, because of supply chain disruptions…
“Shelflation is when the shelf life of food products is compromised due to supply chain problems essentially,” Sylvain Charlebois told Global News.
“Being in Canada, it’s definitely an issue,” Samantha Kasbrick, a registered holistic nutrition practitioner, explained. “We receive produce very late here and it’s picked way earlier, right? I shop for produce every week and still it doesn’t last throughout the week most of the time. So it’s definitely an issue. And groceries are so expensive right now too, so it’s not great.”
What they did
A new study by the AFAL asked more than 1,500 carefully selected Canadians if they were aware of differences in the quality or freshness of products associated with delays in the food supply chain.
What they found
Across the country, 63 percent of those polled said they were having issues with faster-than-normal food spoilage.
“[When] we tried to come up with a number – a dollar figure – we realized that Canadians may have actually wasted over $500 million worth of food over the last six months due to ‘shelflation,’ which is a lot,” Charlebois reports.
But grocery retailers are suffering more than consumers. “It’s hard to blame anybody, and frankly grocers are very much victims here because they probably get products that are already compromised but they don’t want empty shelves either. Empty shelves are bad for business so they want to put things on shelves,” Charlebois notes.
The takeaway
We all have to be aware of the condition of the current condition and best before dates of the fresh foods we’re buying, and buy only as much as we can use before it goes off, to avoid tossing so much food.
My take
Kasbrick also recommends looking up ways on the internet to preserve food longer. Agrifood Canada has a comprehensive site that gives you the complete lowdown on safe food handling and storage. That’s a great place to start. And WebMD provides a handy, science-based reference for keeping your produce fresher longer.
An observation: How ironic that already-obscene food wastage problems are being further exaggerated at a time when food prices are spiking higher than ever before in our lifetimes, and real shortages may be just around the corner.
~ Maggie J.