Britons Maintain Hearty Eating

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29900, 14 August 1962, Page 5

Britons Maintain Hearty Eating

LONDON. Until about the turn of the century the British (unless the historians and the period Novelists'lie) were among the most crudely gluttonous people around the globe. A few* friends would demolish bgif <ri ox at the drop of a hjt. or even without that fiiiple encouragement Very WtiJ. tfftt /alked, crawled or flew’ was safe from the dinner plates of our recent ancestors There was just one. simple snag: you needed money and most people did not have it. The rich grew fat, and -he considerable poor took the scraps that were left. Today, a prosperous, almost egalitarian society can pick and choose its food without fussing with the coppers and shillings The full-purse, wellnourished society of the 1960 s means increased spending on whatever tastes, vitaminises. and costs the most. Up has shot expenditure on pest quality meat, eggs, butter, cheese, fresh vegetables and fresh fruit; dowm has slumped the cheaper foods and the "fillers" such as potatoes. Warnings Inevitably. doctors and specialists have emerged muttering awful warnings that we eat too much of this and that and that it will do something to us. Fat. suggests one authority, will knock us for six as surely as did hardhitting Australians not long ago at the Oval Others riposte that fat prolongs life, is vitamin-cram-med. gives you energy, nervous stamina, and stops you growing grey; fish is good—or bad—for you: so it goes op through the whole dietary lexicon The British public, with its derisory good sense pays precisely no attention to these nutritional “argy-bargies." and presses on. knowing that

a lot of what you fancy doesi you good. Let's look then, in the light of the latest available figures, at modern Britain, in the kitchen sense, at a time w’hen the wage earner in industry is richer than ever in history and takes home an average of £l5 Is 4d a week; at a time when, according to statistics, personal incomes (in 1960 they amounted to £21,108 million) have risen to twice the level of 10 years ago—although, of course, the £ is worth a good deal less than it was worth then. Last year, Britain spent £4860 million on food, compared with £2689 million in 1951. Meat and bacon cost £1255 million, as against £529 million 10 years ago Expenditure on fruit rose startlingly in these ten years from £157 million to £257 million. We spent almost twice as much.on fish. The age of increased leisure is seeing an upswing in demand for labour saving, prepared, or partly prepared products They accounted for nearly one fifth of all household spending on food. Harder Selling Retail distribution, methods of selling, and presentation are at the sharpest and most efficient in the industry’s history, and ceaselessly grow sharper and even more able Those who sell New Zealand meat realise that the competition they face from other foods is the severest ever—and is increasing all the time. Spring chickens (the massproducers of these chickens decided two or three years ago to try to forget the word “broiler” because it was. bad for sales) are only one of the many items that compete for the housewife’s attention, to the disadvantage of lamb Nevertheless, meat traders report with some satisfaction that sales have risen stead-

IHy RICHARD MARTINI

ily: the average consumption last year was 12611 b a head as against 123J1U the previous year. And New Zealand lamb has done better than average. Most of the increase in the sales of New Zealand lamb from 13,000,000 to 18.500.000 carcases in the last 10 years—has been in Britain. The self-service store, alas, seems here to stay for a while, anyway Possibly it’s personal prejudice, but the spectacle of the trolley-wheel-ing housewife dumbly paying her money without anyone to ask her whether her husband's bronchitis is better, or whether the kids are doing well at school, gives shopping the aura of a charmless food-clinic. Social Changes The older woman, used to older courtesies and to the personal efficiencies, mentally echoes Damon Runyon and “wishes to have no part of it.” But, come television and come high wages, sociological and “class” changes, perhaps what fascinates most is the geographical pattern of consumption. It seems, according to Ministry of Agriculture figures, that people in London, the Midlands and Wales have the biggest appetites; at least, they spend more on their food Purchases of condensed milk are highest in the rural areas and lowest in Scotland: they ea* more cheese in the souih-west than in the south and south-east Total consumption of all kinds of meat and meat products varied in 1959 from 11 per cent, above the average in London to 12 per cent below in Scotland: the market for canned and bottled tomatoes was strongly concentrated in the North Midlands, which recorded an average consumption some

two-and-a-half times as high as anywhere else. Less bread is eaten in London and the immediately surrounding counties than m the rest of the country; sprouts are more popular in East Anglia than elsewhere; and the Welsh devour more cauliflower than the national average. What then does the average family with two children spend on its food? What does it buy? Here, according to one expert I consulted, is a typical £6-a-week food budget:— £ s. d. Meat .. 15 0 Milk .. 10 0 Vegetables .. 010 0 Fruit .. 0 5 0 Butter .. 0 6 0 Cheese ..040 Eggs .. 010 0 Bread, cakes .. 010 0 Bacon .. 0 3 0 Tea jam. etc. .. 17 0 6 0 0 The pattern for the future? More and more buying of labour-saving foods, but also increased purchasing of the staples and essentials, such as meat and fish, say the experts.