Surge in takeaways doubles calorie-count

A TAKEAWAY surge during lockdown led to people consuming 50 per cent more fast food than before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned.

Analysis revealed that the increase has continued and now experts have raised fears about what the trend means for plans to tackle the country’s obesity crisis, with one in four Britons now considered obese.

IFS researchers found that changes in eating habits and the closure of restaurants and pubs has had a lasting impact on the amount of fast food being eaten, despite other trends returning to pre-pandemic norms.

In 2019, households consumed an average of 270 calories each week from fast-food outlets and takeaways, accounting for around 31 per cent of their total “out-of-home” food intake.

This surged and hit a peak of 470 calories per week during the third national lockdown in 2021 and has hardly come down since, the IFS said.

The latest data ends in the first quarter of 2022, by which point people were still eating an average 400 calories per week from takeaways, more than 50 per cent more than before the pandemic.

While the calories in foods and takeaways will vary, a burrito, a curry dish, a Mcdonald’s Quarter Pounder or a KFC Zinger Burger could all be in the 400-calorie ballpark.

The IFS said takeaways and fast food accounted for around 46 per cent of all out-of-home intake, higher than it would have been had pre-pandemic trends continued.

Its report, The Longer-term Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Dietary Purchasing Choices of British House- holds, also found that the “the shift towards takeaways was particularly pronounced among households without dependent children”.

Those with children were also more likely to eat takeaways than before 2020, but to a lesser extent.

The IFS said the rising popularity of the takeaway had come at the expense of restaurants, pubs and coffee shops.

Rishi Sunak’s “Eat Out to Help Out” campaign had struggled to shift people back but purchases from supermarkets largely returned to previous levels.

Andrew Mckendrick, an author of the report, said: “The pandemic saw huge changes in how many calories households were buying.

“By the start of 2022 most of these changes had been reversed. The pandemic did leave one legacy, though, in the much-increased use of takeaways.