Toronto’s child hunger rates nearly double as city sees 4.1M food bank visits: report

3:01 With cost of living soaring, hunger in Toronto now a reality

When Volodymyr Kravchuk visits the Daily Bread Food Bank, he’s constantly thinking about his two young sons.

The Toronto resident is often looking for milk, eggs and vegetables such as potatoes or carrots, to make sure his children get the nutrition they need.

Kravchuk and his family moved to Canada from Ukraine in September 2023 and he remembers having to start his life over from scratch. While he holds degrees in psychology and marketing, Kravchuk said it’s been difficult finding stable employment and there are essentials that he has to turn to food banks for.

“Sometimes, somebody can lose their job (and) need more money to feed his family,” Kravchuk, who sometimes volunteers at Daily Bread, said. “In one day, everything can change.”

A new report from Daily Bread Food Bank says the number of children struggling with food insecurity in Toronto has risen, as food bank visits held steady at more than 4.1 million visits for the second year.

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The non-profit’s latest Who’s Hungry report, released Tuesday, says more than one in eight children living in Toronto rely on food banks, which is nearly double the rate from 2022, when one in 15 children relied on them.

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The report says 67 per cent of parents have given up a meal to make sure their children had enough food to eat while 17 per cent had a child in their household go hungry at least once a week in 2026.

Neil Hetherington, CEO of Daily Bread, said this rise in child hunger is “alarming,” as children became the most overrepresented group in food bank clients across the city. He says the roughly 220 food banks his organization services across the city have been feeling the strain.

“The fact that it’s more children than ever before is what’s changing and that it is the working poor,” he said. “It’s a horrific tax on each of the food banks.”

One in 10 Torontonians are still regularly relying on food banks but Hetherington said the city has “risen to the occasion to be able to meet the need.”

However, there are ongoing challenges, especially with the U.S.-Canada tariff war and the cost-of-living crisis.

One in four food bank clients spent all of their income on housing, an increase from one in five clients in 2025.

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“We know why they’re coming to food banks and we just have to have the courage and leadership and fortitude to be able to make those policy changes,” Hetherington said.

The report includes several policy recommendations aimed at all three levels of government to address growing food insecurity, such as a provincial establishment of a Shelter Allowance Reserve Fund to help social assistance recipients regain housing and a municipal investment of $100 million to preserve Toronto’s affordable housing.

Kitty Raman Costa, executive director of the Parkdale Community Food Bank, said they’re serving more than 15,000 food clients through delivery and community drop-ins since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many members of the Parkdale community who are employed still rely on the food bank because of the cost-of-living crisis, Raman Costa said. She’s also seen an influx of families with two working parents come in, who are struggling to balance rent and increasing food costs.

“We need to prioritize items like school lunch supplies, snacks, easy meals that young or older kids can prepare when parents are working,” she said.