Eating less, but eating worse – and while doing far less. That is the gist of two thoroughgoing studies of Britain's food expenditure, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies today.
It is easy to imagine that bulging waistlines are about super-sizing – a loss of portion control. But while confirming that adults are indeed typically a substantial 8kg heavier than they were at the start of the 1980s, the first analysis – which chews over a third of a century of English data – finds that we are actually purchasing fewer calories overall. Soft drinks, snacks and takeaways have all been on an unremitting rise, as expected, but cut-backs in the volume of food bought to cook with at home have more than made up for this in terms of overall energy consumption. If obesity can be traced to a deadly sin, it looks as if it may be sloth rather than gluttony that is to blame.
Up until 2008, the bitter tastes of all this data was somewhat sweetened by the finding that shoppers were choosing to spend more on each calorie – a possible sign of "investment" in better nutrition. Then came the great recession, and this pattern swung into dramatic reverse. In a rich society such as the UK, one might have hoped that the ebbs and flows of the economic tide could be navigated by cutting back on luxuries rather than necessities, such as basic foods, yet the second study uncovers compelling evidence of a nutritional slump.
While the established downward trend in the number of calories bought has continued, hard-pressed families faced with rising food prices have been scrambling to buy a shrinking amount of food on the cheap. There has been significant substitution between different food groups, notably – and particularly ominously – away from fruit and vegetables, and towards processed stuff. There are some signs of ready-meals getting healthier, but not enough to offset the effect of this overall shift. The trend is running towards calorie-rich foods, with more saturated fat and more sugar. Applying US and UK official summary measures of nutritional quality to the data confirms the overall degrading of Britain's diet.
A passing recessionary craving for comfort food would be one thing, but what is most frightening of all is that many of these changes have actually intensified during the technical recovery. After private-sector retrenchment gave way to public austerity from 2010, the shift has only intensified, and become increasingly concentrated on families with children, the segment of the population on whom so many of the coalition's social security cuts are concentrated. Regardless of any bounceback in GDP, Britain is being run on lines that have bitten on the nutrition of the young. The health of the nation may take a long time to recover.
