Association between the nutritional quality of Canadian packaged foods and their prices: an analysis across five food categories
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association between nutritional quality and food prices within the same food category by: (1) identifying price differences among products above or below the nutrient thresholds of the Canadian front-of-package nutrition symbol and (2) investigating price differences among products with differing numbers of nutrients exceeding these thresholds. DESIGN: This study is part of the Food Quality Observatory's work, Québec (Canada). SETTING: For each product, nutrients exceeding the thresholds for Na, sugars and saturated fat were calculated according to Health Canada's guidelines. Prices per 100 g and per 100 kcal (418 kJ) were calculated. Statistical analyses were performed using RStudio to evaluate the association between these price metrics and nutritional quality, based on these thresholds. PARTICIPANTS: 118). RESULTS: Results indicate that nutrient type mediates the association between price and nutritional quality. Products exceeding the saturated fat threshold were generally more expensive, whereas those with elevated sugars and Na contents were cheaper. Products with two nutrients exceeding thresholds tended to cost less than those with one or no nutrient above thresholds. Notably, these results varied within each food category. These patterns varied across food categories. CONCLUSION: Foods high in nutrients of concern are typically cheaper within their category, except those high in saturated fat. Findings highlight the importance of monitoring food prices, especially as Canada's nutrition symbol policy becomes mandatory, to prevent worsening health inequalities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".