2004 Edmonton Average Weekly Nutritious Food Basket Prices

What is a Nutritious Food Basket?

A nutritious food basket is a food costing tool that is a measure of the cost of healthy eating based on current nutrition recommendations. They have been used in Canada for half a century to assess the cost of an adequate diet in both health and social service contexts. One of Canada's oldest food costing resources has been in use by the Montreal Diet Dispensary since 1948. The federal government became involved in food costing in 1974, more recently by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada who developed and priced the Nutritious Food Basket and the Thrifty Nutritious Food Basket. These food baskets provided benchmark costs for feeding 23 age and gender groups in 18 cities across the country until 1995. Since then a national food basket, revised to reflect current nutrition recommendations and food purchase patterns, was developed by Health Canada. Edmonton Nutritious Food Basket Prices, first developed in 1995, is based on these standards and has been revised to reflect current nutrition recommendations.

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For more information about the content of this document, contact Roy Larsen.
This document is maintained by Gail Atkinson.
This information published to the web on March 1, 2004.
Last Reviewed/Revised on February 15, 2006.