Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Study doesn't bear fruit

Monday's Heart and Stroke Foundation annual report should have been given a big pass by the media. Instead, the palpitations in newsrooms were enough to send camera crews and reporters into the maximum heart rate zone as they sprinted to get their food-prices-gone-wild stories out the door for the 6 p.m. news.

In October 2008, the foundation commissioned volunteer shoppers in 66 communities to go out to regular grocery stores (not discounters) and purchase a basket of goods of exclusively leading national brands for healthy eating based on Health Canada's nutritious food basket standards.

Yes their conclusions are alarming. Thankfully, they are also fundamentally misleading and flawed. Note to policy makers: Defibrillator panels are not needed.

To be fair to the foundation, the issue of access to fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, lean meat and whole grain products is important. And access at affordable prices is a real issue when it comes to healthy eating and the promotion of long-term heart and physical health, especially in the North and remote areas.

But excuse me, almost no one goes shopping on a weekly basis and only buys the leading national brands. And not one person I know does not comparison shop and pick and choose between the national brand or private-label or no-name brand when the price difference is significant. As for the assertions that the prices of fruit, meat and dairy products vary widely even across the same region, OK, so what?

If lean ground beef is expensive one week, shoppers usually take a pass or buy boneless chicken breasts on special or discount pork tenderloin. As for the reported variations in whole grain pastas, fresh fruits, etc., welcome to the beauty of a competitive market and seasonal variations.

Loss leader pricing (read: Deep discounts) on some products is offset by higher margins on others. And fresh produce costs more in some cities if they are farther away from the local orchard or if the bulk of October's product was imported from Florida, California or Ecuador. Then there is the buying power and reach of different grocery store chains which also explains price differences.

The timeframe of this study was too short. The constraints to ensure consistency -- buy the same brands, don't buy no-name, stay away from discounters -- do not mimic actual shopping behaviour and skew the study's results beyond reliability.

As for the foundation's reasoning that provincial governments should monitor grocery prices, investigate price variations, and potentially regulate prices as they do for alcohol, ah, no thanks. When governments go looking into private industry supply chains, especially those of competitive industries, we are one step closer to direct intervention and control. What's next, 1980s Soviet-era bread lineups?

Government does have a role to regulate food safety, set standards for on-site preparation, ensure proper labelling, and to investigate issues of predatory pricing or alleged collusion in the world of grocery stores.

However, policy makers should avoid the temptation to stick their noses into how Sobeys buys fruits, how Loblaws budgets for delivery truck fuel, what Safeway pays its employees, the cost of utility bills at IGA, Metro's property taxes, Farm Boy's marketing budget or A&P's health and pension liabilities as all these things determine the final total of your grocery bill.

There's no grocery pricing conspiracy here; it's simply the market at work. The Heart and Stroke Foundation study is a muscle spasm, not cardiac arrest.

Please ignore it, exercise regularly, don't smoke and eat your fruits and veggies.