Toronto, Ont.  (Rural Roots Canada) – Canadians are paying closer attention to claims about their food as more people question whether the information they receive can be trusted.

The Canadian Centre for Food Integrity’s latest research found concern about food and marketing misinformation has risen to 43 per cent.

CCFI executive director Lisa Bishop-Spencer said misinformation has become so common that many Canadians now expect to come across it.

“Canadians are not simply absorbing food information at face value anymore,” Bishop-Spencer said. “Many are actively checking claims and they’re comparing sources and trying to determine what’s credible.”

One issue getting more attention is “maple washing.”

Bishop-Spencer described maple washing as making a product appear more Canadian than it actually is. She said this raises questions about whether the information people receive truly reflects the food they are buying.

“We’re seeing sort of these concerns going beyond communications,” she said. “They speak to Canadians’ confidence that the information they receive actually reflects the food that they’re buying.”

Bishop-Spencer said the sources Canadians use most for food information are not always the ones they consider the most trustworthy.

Artificial intelligence is one example.

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She said most Canadians don’t consider AI particularly trustworthy, but it has become one of the main tools they use to find information about food.

“The issue becomes how do we make the system more accessible for people so that they can be sure that they’re getting the right information, because that’s not always the case with AI,” Bishop-Spencer said.

While Canadians may be unsure about information from AI, the research found they continue to place a high level of trust in farmers.

Farmers have returned to first place among the five most trusted groups in Canada’s food system.

Bishop-Spencer said farmers and scientists regularly compete for the top position. Scientists moved ahead of farmers for the first time last year, but farmers have now taken back the number one spot.

“Farmers and scientists and university researchers, those are the most trusted sources,” she said.

Bishop-Spencer said the gap between who Canadians trust and where they get their information creates a challenge for the food system.

Bishop-Spencer said the food sector needs to rethink how it communicates with Canadians.

“The challenge for the food system is not just to provide more information because more facts isn’t going to help, but to make the credible information easier to recognize and verify,” she said.