If you think your grocery bills are high, read on and think again.
An Inuit living in a remote community in Canada’s Northwest Territories, 124 miles North of the Arctic Circle, has revealed the extortionate price of food she faces.
Willow Allen, 24, who works as a model after being discovered on Instagram, takes viewers on a grocery shopping trip in one of her TikToks.
In the clip, she pans in on a variety of goods, showing how a bag of oranges costs C$16.99 ($12.48), a pizza packs a punch at C$16.99 ($12.48), a box of blueberries comes in at C$9.99 ($7.34), but the tipping point is a packet of four chicken breasts priced at C$47.09 ($34.60).
These goods cost considerably more than the connected areas of Canada where at Walmart, for instance, you can get four chicken breasts for C$14 ($10.29) and a stuffed crust pepperoni pizza, similar to the one Willow saw, will set you back half the amount at C$8.27 ($6.08).
Willow Allen , 24, who works as a model after being discovered on Instagram, takes viewers on a grocery shopping trip in one of her TikToks
In the clip, she pans in on a variety of goods, showing how a bag of oranges costs C$16.99 and a pack of minced meat comes in at C$11.30
While the prices Willow shows in her hometown of Inuvik are high, she explains that in more remote communities costs climb even higher as everything has to be airlifted in.
In Inuvik – which is the third largest community in the Northwest Territories with a population of around 3,240 – there is a highway.
Therefore, it is easier to transport goods to Northmart, which serves as the town’s main grocery store.
At the end of the TikTok, Willow displays the contents of her two shopping bags back at home.
In total she bought 18 products with the check coming out at C$215.51 ($158.34).
The haul she shows looks pretty basic, with the items including a pizza, a pack of tortillas, a bag of pasta, a tub of hummus, a bag of feta and two packs of minced meat.
To date her grocery shopping TikTok has been watching more than 3.5 million times, with many viewers expressing their shock.
One commenter from Canada said: ‘Breaks every ounce of me to think that our government sees this and has not found a solution to help these prices to match the rest of the country.’
Thanks to her insights into life in the Arctic, Willow has built up a loyal following on social media with more than 672,000 followers on TikTok and over 122,000 on Instagram
A box of blueberries comes in at C$9.99 ($7.34), but the tipping point is a packet of four chicken breasts priced at C$47.09 ($34.60)
At the end of the TikTok, Willow displays the contents of her two shopping bags back at home. In total she bought 18 products with the total coming out at C$215.51 ($158.34)
Another viewer from the U.S. added: ‘How on earth do people survive on those prices?! I’m struggling in the Midwest! Wow… just wow.’
The Canadian government currently provides subsidies to the Arctic community for certain groceries, but as Willow shows, this does not go a long way.
This isn’t the first time the Inuit model has exposed the high prices of food in her region.
In a previous Instagram post, she created a video showing a variety of food prices at stores in the Canadian Arctic.
Her accompanying caption read: ‘This is forced poverty.’
She intermixed photos of the grocery store prices with images of locals campaigning.
In one still image, an Inuit woman can be seen holding a board reading: ‘$2,000 a month to feed my family is forced poverty.’
In another shot, a man holds two signs with his collective plea to the government being: ‘Stop the crazy prices! I have to feed my family!’
Thanks to her insights into life in the Arctic, Willow has built up a loyal following on social media with more than 672,000 followers on TikTok and over 122,000 on Instagram.
Some of the other topics she addresses is the forced displacement of indigenous communities and the art of hunting seals and whales to survive in such harsh conditions.
After tying the knot in April, she is now expecting her first child.
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