Joint Study of the Determinants of Healthy Eating in Canada from the 2015 CCHS-Nutrition Survey

With 26% of Canadians suffering from a severe form of obesity, significant steps must be taken to reduce the social and economic costs. Given its major contribution to this phenomenon, the quality of food has been at the heart of many past studies. Much is known today about socio-economic and demographic factors, but there are very few studies that have jointly analyzed different categories of factors affecting healthy eating. This study attempts to fill this gap by including, in particular, the health status (chronic diseases) whose role has, to our knowledge, never been studied in Canada. This study also updates knowledge on the determinants of healthy eating in this country, using data from the recent Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS- Nutrition 2015). The Healthy Eating demand function is derived from the theory of domestic production of Becker and Lancaster demand model. A review of the literature on the determinants of food quality helped to refine the choice of variables for this function, which we finally estimated by multiple linear regression. In addition to the significant effects of age, gender, education and well-being on healthy eating that are confirmed, this study has revealed new findings. New results include: the positive effect of food security on healthy eating, the negative effect of higher vegetable prices, the positive correlation between diabetes and better nutrition, urban people who are supposed to have access to a richer food supply do not have a healthier diet than rural people, and immigrants have a better diet than Canadians. From a theoretical perspective, the study highlighted the complexity of the analysis of healthy eating and the importance of specific factors other than economic factors. Given a vision and projects that are currently fragmented, the results call for more multi-sectoral actions to effectively and sustainably address the problem of unhealthy diets in Canada.