[Hockenbrizzle]

Can anybody comment on how well food is regulated in Canada? Since moving from the US to the EU I've definitely noticed a difference in food quality. I'll soon be moving to Quebec so I would be interested to hear if Canada is more like the US or EU in this respect.

[alxv]

During the winter, most fresh vegetables in Canada are imported from Mexico and the US. These are mostly breed for shelf life and usually bland. In the summer, local fruit and vegetable can be quite tasty if you know where to shop. The public markets of Montreal are very good (http://www.marchespublics-mtl.com/). You can also subscribe to get weekly organic baskets from local farms during the harvest season (http://www.paniersbio.org/en/).

[nibs]

I will add that for products with nutrition labels, label claims are way stricter in Canada. In the USA, a label claim such as 200mg of Caffiene or 200mg of Sodium must be true at the best before date in order to be valid, but there is no tollerance for how far outside of it the product is when fresh. So 200mg of caffiene could actually mean 400mg of caffiene, with a five year shelf life, so that as the caffiee degrades, the product stays on the shelf long enough to sell, and is still 200mg at expiry. In Canada, a product must be within a percentage of claim value (5-10%) at all times, so things are much more likely to contain what they say they contain in the amount they say they contain it. Further, many products are pre-market regulated (supplements/fortified foods) and/or regulators are on-site full time (meat and some cheese processing) as opposed to the US where there is mostly post-market regulation (ie. a complaint is followed up by an inspector).