One expert thinks it could be on its way out — but a dairy brand says they have no plans to ditch the ubiquitous dairy pouches.Milk in bags, a peculiar piece of Eastern Canadian culture. But are they going by the wayside, and would we care?
AgroPur, the dairy company that owns both Sealtest and Natrel, brands that sell milk in 4 litre bags, says it's one of their most popular products. "It is actually the lowest price for milk compared to other formats, like the two litre format," Dupere said. Sylvain Charlebois, a food researcher at Dalhousie University— and a voice who chimed into the bagged milk discussion on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — says he expects bagged milk to go by the wayside in 10 years."The market in Ontario relies on people who actually need to buy four litres of milk," Charlebois said. "Who are they? Big households. People who drink a lot of milk. And there are few and fewer of them.
"That's why you're able to sell that format at a very, very low price point. And so the economics of bagged milk are pretty strong for the industry for sure," Charlebois said, noting the adaptations society took on, like bagged milk pitchers, when bagged milk became popular.Canada's Food Guide also changed about five years ago, Charlebois said, and water — not milk — is the drink of choice for the guide.