The Grocery Audit You Weren't Supposed to See

Perhaps like you, I’ve been surprised and increasingly frustrated by the amount of American produce still lining my local grocery store shelves, especially during a season when Canada is able to grow a lot more.

I decided to find out just how widespread the issue is.

I recently conducted an in-person study of the fresh produce sections of nine grocery store brands in my city. The goal was to document what proportion of their offerings were American products or where the country of origin was ambiguous.

I manually counted and logged 2,203 unique produce SKUs, ranging from loose apples and packaged mushrooms to bags of lettuce and cartons of berries. (Audit methodology is available here.)