OP-ED: Top five food stories of 2025

"The Dalhousie University Agri-Food Analytics Lab’s annual Top Food Stories is now out, offering a snapshot of the issues that shaped Canada’s food landscape in 2025."

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Author: Sylvain Charlebois

The Dalhousie University Agri-Food Analytics Lab’s annual Top Food Stories is now out, offering a snapshot of the issues that shaped Canada’s food landscape in 2025.

This year’s ranking moves beyond headlines to focus on the structural forces influencing food affordability, trust, and system resilience. While some stories captured public attention through symbolism and nostalgia, others exposed deeper economic and regulatory fault lines that will continue to shape Canada’s food system well beyond 2025.

5. GLP-1s Transforming Food Demand

A quiet structural shock to consumption.

GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic became one of the most consequential, if understated, food stories of 2025. An estimated two million Canadians now use GLP-1s primarily for weight loss—roughly the combined populations of Manitoba and New Brunswick. Regardless of public-health debates, the market effects were immediate: reduced demand for snacks, confectionery, alcohol, and some foodservice categories. The number of Canadians using GLP-1s for weight loss rose approximately 80% in one year. For food manufacturers and retailers, 2025 marked the moment when GLP-1s shifted from curiosity to structural demand disruptor.

4. The Cloned Meat Disaster

A regulatory and communications failure.

One of the year’s most emotionally charged food stories stemmed from Health Canada’s handling of meat derived from the offspring of cloned animals. The agency was preparing to classify such products as non-novel, allowing commercialization without labelling or proactive public disclosure. When the approval process was abruptly paused, it became clear that no public communication strategy existed. Social media reacted first; national media followed. For the first time in years, Canadians rejected a food technology not on scientific grounds alone, but due to opacity and perceived regulatory arrogance. The episode underscored a new reality: consumer trust can no longer be assumed, and transparency is now a core regulatory function.

3. Tariffs and Counter-Tariffs Hitting Food Prices

Policy volatility with direct price effects.

Trade tensions dominated 2025, and agri-food was not spared—despite CUSMA. The elimination of the de minimis exemption, increased paperwork, and inconsistent enforcement raised costs throughout the supply chain. As Canadians adjusted to a U.S. administration openly skeptical of global trade, fatigue grew around the unpredictability and politicization of tariffs. Ottawa lifted tariffs on several food products on September 1, with the U.S. following weeks later, but uncertainty persisted—particularly around fertilizers and other key inputs. The year reinforced how quickly trade policy can translate into food price volatility.

2. Grocer Code of Conduct Established (Finally)

A long-awaited structural reform.

After years of delay, 2025 delivered a breakthrough: the Grocery Code of Conduct, set to take effect on January 1, 2026. This represents the most significant structural reform in the Canadian food sector since the 1980s. The code aims to rebalance power between dominant grocers and suppliers, with the longer-term objective of stabilizing food prices. Critics argue the current version resembles a code of ethics more than a binding enforcement tool, but industry hopes it will reduce friction and improve predictability. If the voluntary framework fails, pressure will intensify for mandatory regulation.

1. Structural Food Inflation Crisis

The defining food and economic story of 2025.

Above all else, 2025 was the year Canadians began to understand that food inflation is not a temporary shock. Canadians felt poorer at the grocery store, and political discourse—at last—started to move away from simplistic “greedflation” narratives toward structural causes: logistics inefficiencies, carbon pricing, interprovincial trade barriers, regulatory drag, labour shortages, supply-chain power imbalances, and persistent policy failures. Food insecurity reached historic levels. HungerCount 2025 reported more than two million Canadians using food banks every month, with one in four Canadians food insecure. Crucially, awareness grew that Canada’s food inflation problem began in 2008, following the financial crisis, and never truly corrected. Unlike the U.S., Canada failed to reset. By 2025, the consensus finally emerged: Canada’s food inflation problem is structural, not cyclical—and will not resolve without deep, politically uncomfortable reform.

Honourable Mentions

Talks to End Interprovincial Trade Barriers

Food affordability finally reframed internal trade barriers as an economic issue, not a constitutional abstraction. While progress remains incremental, 2025 marked a notable shift in tone toward regulatory harmonization.

The MAHA Movement

Closely associated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the MAHA movement gained influence in select policy and activist circles. While not mainstream, its spillover into Canada showed the country is not immune to ideologically driven skepticism toward food regulation, science, and industrial scale.

— Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University.