Majority of Calgary Food Bank clients facing severe food insecurity: report

More Calgarians are relying on emergency food assistance to make ends meet, with new research highlighting the toll that food insecurity takes on physical and mental well-being.

A Calgary Food Bank report released Oct. 16 found that 55 per cent of surveyed households experienced severe food insecurity over the past year — reducing meal sizes, skipping meals or going entire days without eating.

The Feed to Flourish: Wellbeing in Food Insecure Households report found that 95 per cent of respondents experienced some level of food insecurity, while 98 per cent worried about meeting day-to-day expenses.

The findings are based on interviews with 31 Calgary Food Bank clients and survey responses from 1,878 clients collected in 2026.

Melissa From, president and CEO of the Calgary Food Bank, said the research reflects a growing number of people who are working and paying their bills, but cannot afford to feed their families.

“What we’re hearing today are really more longitudinal problems, folks who are literally having to use the food bank in order to be able to pay their rent and their mortgage, and these become issues that don’t have quick and easy solutions,” From said.

“This is now folks who for all intents and purposes are doing everything right, they’re working full time, they’re paying their bills, and they’re simply not earning enough to get by.”

From said nearly 30 per cent of people using the food bank are working full-time, while more than 60 per cent of senior clients had never experienced food insecurity before retirement.

The findings also show that food insecurity affects more than access to groceries, with 71 per cent of severely food-insecure households describing their lives as quite or extremely stressful.

Dr. Lauren Drogos, head of research at the Calgary Food Bank, said the study found that well-being declined as the severity of food insecurity increased.

“For our severely food insecure households, significantly more of them were reporting things like not having hope for the future or very low satisfaction with their quality of life,” Drogos said.

The report also challenges assumptions that people experiencing food insecurity lack the knowledge or skills to prepare healthy meals.

Nearly all respondents said someone in their household could create healthy meals, yet clients frequently described fresh produce and meat as unaffordable luxuries.

Sylvain Charlebois, a researcher who studies the food industry and grocery prices, said the pressure on household budgets reflects broader affordability challenges across Canada.

Charlebois said the share of disposable household income spent on food has increased from about 18 per cent five years ago to 22 per cent today.

“A lot of people are running a budgetary deficit when it comes to the cost of living,” he said. “Once they pay for shelter, transportation, heating and everything else, they’re in the minuses when they actually show up at the grocery store.”

The report found that 40 per cent of respondents had to choose between food and other necessities, including clothing, while 42 per cent said food was the household expense most affected by rising prices.

Despite the financial pressures, food hampers offer some relief.

Clients told researchers that receiving food helped reduce stress and freed up money for rent, transportation and other living expenses.

From said staff can see that relief when clients receive groceries that include produce, protein and dairy, as well as food that meets their cultural and dietary needs.

“You can almost see some of that stress melting off of them . . . when they realize that at least for the next 10 days, they are not going to have to worry about that,” From said.

However, the food bank faces many of the same rising costs as the households it serves, including the price of purchasing food and fuel for its delivery trucks.

From said addressing food insecurity requires governments to consider how people can retain enough income to cover basic necessities.

“We need to look at that as a society and say, what are we doing wrong?” she said.

The Calgary Food Bank conducted the mixed-methods study, combining semi-structured interviews with an online survey to examine clients’ food insecurity and physical, mental and social well-being.

Researchers interviewed 31 clients and distributed the survey to 46,106 clients over the age of 18 who had provided an email address. A total of 1,878 clients completed most of the survey’s questions on demographics, well-being and food insecurity.

The online survey was conducted using Qualtrics and was available in seven languages, and researchers aimed for a 99 per cent confidence level with a five per cent margin of error, based on the initial sample-size calculations.

The full Feed to Flourish: Wellbeing in Food Insecure Households report is available at calgaryfoodbank.com/resources.

— Postmedia News