Canada's Favourite Junk Food By Province in 2023

Thanksgiving Day in Canada rolls around once a year, and it's definitely a day worth celebrating. Landing on the second Monday of October every year, it's a national public holiday celebrated across the country, as is even a prescribed day of rest in New Brunswick. Most people will have the day off work and get to spend time with their loved ones, often indulging in delicious treats and lavish dinners. So, while it's first and foremost a day to be thankful, it also celebrates foods high in fats, sugar, salt, carbs, and calories. The good stuff. 

But with that in mind, the research and analytics team at Casinos.com took a quick break from testing Canadian casino sites because we wanted to find out what Canada's favourite snack food was, alongside data for each province and territory. For the purposes of this research, we left out fast food restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC as they are worthy of their own bespoke nationally celebrated day (National Fast Food Day, November 16). Likewise, we didn't include drinks or sodas, and basically, anything you can consider healthy.

Sour Patch Kids emerged as the nation's favourite snack. Likewise, Skittles, Pringles, and Starburst all performed well in the 2023 study.  Oreos will be disappointed with their showing, but Kit Kat will be pleased to have been the most heavily featured chocolate bar. 

What Junk Food Reigns Supreme in Canada

There were a couple of high performers in terms of overall search results, with Oreos, Granola Bars, Skittles and Gummy Bears all having high search volumes - with Oreos coming out on top. 

 Despite this, however, Oreos didn't trend as any province or territory favourite junk food -  with the Wunderbar landing the top award.

Who loves Wunderbars the most - Ontario and British Columbia.

Sour Patch Kids appear 4 times in provinces' top three snack foods, the most of any snack. Oreo (2), Reese's (2) and Starburst (2) were both in the mix for the nation's favourite snacks based off their top 3 appearances.

Kit Kat only appeared once in the entire list, coming in as Ontario's second favourite junk food. No other province or territory had this snack in its top three.

Miss Vickies chips were the runaway favourite in Quebec, while Yukon also had chips as their favourite snack, but in the form of Dortios.

Mr. Big chocolate bars, Ketchup Chips and Animal Crackers were surprising underperformers in the study.

What is Each Canadian Province/Territories Top Three Favourite Junk Foods

Methodology:

We used Google Trends to measure the level of interest in 32 of the nation's favourite junk food/snacks. Fast food restaurants were excluded, with this study instead referring to snacks available to purchase in stores. Sodas and chewing gum were also excluded.

• Data was collected over a 12-month period from October 4, 2022 - October 5, 2023

In the case where a state had equal levels of interest for multiple snacks, search volumes for each item using Semrush were measured in that area to determine a favourite. In some cases, where no search interest or volume presided, an "N/A" classification was given.