Fruit and vegetable consumption by poorer families falls 30%, figures show | Society | The Guardian

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Lower income families in the UK have cut their consumption of fruit and vegetables by nearly a third in the wake of the recession and rising food prices, to just over half of the five-a-day portions that the government recommends for a healthy diet. Households in the lowest tenth of incomes were buying only 2.7 portions of fruit and vegetables a day at the end of 2010, the latest year for which figures are available, while the average household continued to buy about four portions per person, according to statistics from the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). For lower income households, that represents a 30% decline in purchases of fresh fruit and vegetables since 2006. These rates are likely to have declined yet further in the past year, as inflation has continued upwards and households across the board have seen real incomes shrink. Women are likely to be the worst hit by the fall, as research shows mothers tend to deny themselves meals to give more to their children. "It's very bad news that people on lower incomes are now even less likely to get their five a day. We urgently need to look at this - food and nutrition are at the centre of our national life," said Mary Creagh, Labour's shadow environment secretary. The deterioration in the diets of those worst affected by the recession will be highlighted on Monday in a parliamentary debate on food, called by Labour. Opposition MPs want faster progress on the proposed grocery code adjudicator, which they said would help ensure fairness among supermarkets, suppliers and consumers, and ways to put a brake on food price inflation. Farmers have been among the most vocal proponents of a grocery code adjudicator, because they accuse big supermarkets of driving down their prices below the cost of production, and they want to see an end to what they regard as unfair practices. But Labour argues that the adjudicator should also benefit consumers, by stamping out confusing pricing practices and ensuring the bumper profits made by the big chains are not at the expense of households. Creagh said a debate on food was urgently needed, as rising food prices and poorer nutrition for those in lower income households were problems the coalition government had ignored. She said: "It's an utter disgrace that we are the seventh richest country in the world, and yet we are seeing hundreds of thousands of people going hungry." She pointed to the Trussell Trust food banks, which handed out food parcels to more than 100,000 people last year, a third of them children. "We have to look this squarely in the face – this invisible hunger is taking root in our society, and it's very much women who are being affected," she said. Labour will also call for better food labelling and highlight the problem of the increasing expense of school dinners, which councils are charging more for as their funding streams have been cut. The average school dinner has gone up 5p in the past year, to £1.88 in primary schools catered by the local authority, and by 4p to £1.98 in secondary schools. These price rises could force increasing numbers of parents to take their children out of school meals and make do with a less nutritious meal, Creagh warned. Families are now spending about £24.50 per person a week on food, equating to about £98 for a family of four. Food spending accounts for 11.5% of income for the average family, but 15.8% for those on low incomes. Food inflation over recent years has been fuelled by high energy prices, changing consumption patterns around the world, weather patterns and speculation in the commodity markets. Last year, food price inflation reached about 4%. For a couple with two young children, according to Labour, that added up to an additional £233 on the family food bill over the past year. Purchases of fresh fruit and vegetables declined most between 2007 and 2010, according to the Defra figures, which were published shortly before Christmas. The report also found people were buying less beef, lamb and fish, but increasing their purchases of cheaper meat such as bacon.

This just says so much about humanity.

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Italians facing up to job losses, rising prices and austerity budgets are cutting back on their traditional long holidays and leisurely lunches. But as the nation's ice-cream makers meet this week for their annual expo in Rimini, there is evidence that millions of hard-up Italians are refusing to give up their gelato. "Spending on ice-cream in 2011 showed no change on previous years, amounting to €2.5bn (£2bn), which is about €100 a family," said Marco Forcellino, a spokesman for the expo, known by the acronym Sigep, where 100,000 visitors will get stuck in to the latest confections dreamed up by Italy's 36,000 ice-cream makers. Forcellino said he was seeing a new focus on classics such as chocolate at the show this year, as well as new trends such as rice-based cinnamon ice-cream, seaweed flavour and a salted, mushroom variety to eat with main courses. At the expo, ice-cream makers from 10 nations will square off in competition with rounds involving best cone, best ice-cream dessert and best ice-cream sculpture. After entering the record books last year with a 3-metre (10ft) high ice-cream cone, organisers are showing off an 800kg (1,700lb) chocolate this year, the world's biggest, claimed Forcellino, "and as large as a desk". The expo is also dedicated to Italy's cake and pastry makers, who are providing their own sweet relief to Italians during the downturn, with sales of pandoro and panettone cakes rising 6% at Christmas. Clever designs are big this year, said Forcellino, noting how one chocolate rendition of a violin uses three different types of chocolate to denote three different types of wood. The traditionally male-dominated pastry making trade was now being increasingly entered by women, he added. "The long, difficult hours were traditionally seen as putting off women in Italy, but things are changing," he said. The atmosphere in Rimini this week, he added, would be "party-like", with a large crowd expected on the first day. "Pastry shops are often closed in Italy on a Monday so we expect a huge crowd," he said. "When Italian pasticcieri get together you see how they love their work."

Italians refuse to give up their ice-cream amid the belt-tightening | Life and style | The Guardian

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I am not sure I get your point. What does it say about humanity?

I'd like to see some studies on this but I suspect that fruits and vegs are so expensive compared to meat & cereal-based stuff because of the lower subsidies, direct and indirect, they receive.

How's that free market?

NB: Wow. People are quite good at saving on shopping. Okay, I live in Central London and got to grab lunch from M&S (usually, I try to keep it at or slightly below £5 a day) and my weekly shopping done on W/E comes in at £30-40.

Call it £65 a week on food. Slightly conservatively (I suspect). That's for a single person. And I do try and avoid a starbucks treat or whatever. All of the time. So... £25?! Pretty impressive!

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

I am not sure I get your point. What does it say about humanity? I'd like to see some studies on this but I suspect that fruits and vegs are so expensive compared to meat & cereal-based stuff because of the lower subsidies, direct and indirect, they receive.

They're not more expensive. It's just that people would rather try to get by on 300g of reconstituted pork by-products and icecream than on 2kg of vegetable soup.

It's not that people can't afford fruit and veg, it's that when there's a choice to make they'll go for the unhealthy stuff. Same thing happens if you offer them a choice between food and cigs. That's why this healthy labeling stuff is bullshit. You oblige supermarkets to print "THIS WILL KILL YOU" on the bacon, and people would still prefer it to a nice imam bayaldi.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

They're not more expensive. It's just that people would rather try to get by on 300g of reconstituted pork by-products and icecream than on 2kg of vegetable soup.

Per kgs, maybe not. But the quantity of vegs you need to replace meat or pasta is pretty high. I would suspect that a veggie/veg-heavy diet is actually more expensive than a more standard one.

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It's not that people can't afford fruit and veg, it's that when there's a choice to make they'll go for the unhealthy stuff. Same thing happens if you offer them a choice between food and cigs. That's why this healthy labeling stuff is bullshit. You oblige supermarkets to print "THIS WILL KILL YOU" on the bacon, and people would still prefer it to a nice imam bayaldi.

That's true, of course, but here it fails to explain a decline. Unless you want to argue that, in bad times, people are loading up on 'comfort' food - which are usually bad for your health.

It's a possibility but I don't think so. Chocolate or ice-creams are not cheap. I suspect that, if people are cutting back on food expenses, they're loading up on stuff like pasta/potatoes-based.

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Per kgs, maybe not. But the quantity of vegs you need to replace meat or pasta is pretty high. I would suspect that a veggie/veg-heavy diet is actually more expensive than a more standard one.

That would be why medieval peasants eked out a shabby living on fillet steak, while the rich luxuriated in minestrone and porridge...

The problem is that people don't know how to cook any more. True, a plate of veg itself isn't as satisfying as something with meat in it, but everyone used to know the tricks to use to make it more umami (stock, MSG or a piece of bacon cut up and chucked into the mix, mainly). The wierd thing is that you hear about nothing but on tv cookery programmes these days, but people would rather buy a ready meal than put it into practice, because trying a new recipe demands planning and a certain amount of intellectual effort. The even wierder thing is that the ready meals themselves are 90% corn flour and MSG, because the companies that make them want to keep the amount of meat they use to a minimum, precisely because it's expensive.

I guess what people are paying for isn't actually extra meat. It's more like they're outsourcing the task of creating an illusion of the presence of meat.

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That's true, of course, but here it fails to explain a decline. Unless you want to argue that, in bad times, people are loading up on 'comfort' food - which are usually bad for your health.

It's more complicated than that, thanks to the outsourcing/self-delusion business I mentioned above. Basically, people are greedy and lazy.

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It's a possibility but I don't think so. Chocolate or ice-creams are not cheap. I suspect that, if people are cutting back on food expenses, they're loading up on stuff like pasta/potatoes-based.

How do you account for the fact that icecream sales haven't fallen?

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Originally Posted by Zichao

That would be why medieval peasants eked out a shabby living on fillet steak, while the rich luxuriated in minestrone and porridge...

National Retail Prices in London : Let's call it £10 per kilo.

Which Shape of Pasta is the Cheapest? - Pasta cost of | Ask MetaFilter : Let's call it £1.25 per kilo.

Tesco tomatoes: About £2 per kilo but can climb to £7.

How much calorie content in a kilo of tomatoes versus a kilo of meat?

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People would rather buy a ready meal than put it into practice, because trying a new recipe demands planning and a certain amount of intellectual effort. The even wierder thing is that the ready meals themselves are 90% corn flour and MSG, because the companies that make them want to keep the amount of meat they use to a minimum, precisely because it's expensive. I guess what people are paying for isn't actually extra meat. It's more like they're outsourcing the task of creating an illusion of the presence of meat.

True, that's another issue. Ready meals aren't exactly the healthiest option.

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Basically, people are greedy and lazy.

Which fails to explain why they got greedier and lazier.

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How do you account for the fact that icecream sales haven't fallen?

Haagen-daz effect. Basically, a small luxury you treat yourself to, in order to bear the shit called life during the rest of the day.

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[quote]

Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

National Retail Prices in London : Let's call it £10 per kilo. Which Shape of Pasta is the Cheapest? - Pasta cost of | Ask MetaFilter : Let's call it £1.25 per kilo. Tesco tomatoes: About £2 per kilo but can climb to £7. How much calorie content in a kilo of tomatoes versus a kilo of meat?

Firstly, pasta wasn't mentioned in the original article, so we have no idea how much people are buying compared to BITD. Secondly, what sort of masochist buys "fresh" tomatoes in the UK anyway? Bleurgh. I guess that you might if you were going to oven-dry them, but then you have to add in the cost of the gas, oil, salt and garlic and then subtract the fact that you use less when they're dried than when they're fresh. If you're destitute, you buy massive great catering-size tins from Lidl which cost a quid or two and last ages.

Then you add in carbs and some chicken stock to make it feel as filling as something with meat in it.

You also have to take into account the fact that people think of meat as filling, but if you're buying the cheapest you can find, it's mostly water and additives. A McDonald's burger looks dead cheap at £2.99, but you're going to need to eat two or three to fill you up.

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Which fails to explain why they got greedier and lazier.

They didn't, they just hide it less well when they've got less money.

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Haagen-daz effect. Basically, a small luxury you treat yourself to, in order to bear the shit called life during the rest of the day.

Same thing for meat.

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Basically, my point is that these people are making choices. Not necessarily good choices. But saying that people can't afford to buy fruit and veg is bullshit.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Firstly, pasta wasn't mentioned in the original article, so we have no idea how much people are buying compared to BITD.

If fruits, veggies and nice meat consumption are all going down, I think it's fair to assume stuff like pasta is going up. It's the cheapest way to get significant calorie intake.

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They didn't, they just hide it less well when they've got less money.

Sorry, I don't think I understand what you're saying.

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Same thing for meat.

Mouais. I love steaks but I don't consider them as much of a treat as I would a nice, big, fat ice-cream.

Originally Posted by Zichao

Basically, my point is that these people are making choices. Not necessarily good choices. But saying that people can't afford to buy fruit and veg is bullshit.

I don't agree. I think that, yes, it's almost always a question of choice as (relatively) few people are really that hard-up. So, if poor people are spending 15% of their budget on food, there is the question of what they are doing with the remaining 85% and if they could make some arbitrage there.

Then, there is the question of what they decide to do, within that 15% envelope.

And, here, it seems that, with the crisis hitting, poor people are trying to cut corners. Could it be that it's because food is one of the most flexible budget item i.e. you can really modify your food bill by switching from expensive stuff to cheap one? Maybe. Is it because eating badly will only lead to health issue far in the future i.e. it's psychologically less problematic to give up fruits and veggies than to reduce heating or cut transport?

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