Why British families turned their backs on home cooking
THESE days, there’s a takeaway on virtually every corner and our high streets are lined with restaurants.
But documents released today reveal how British families slowly turned their backs on home cooking.
While nearly half of families in the 1950s never ate outside the home, by 1983 the average Briton went out for three meals a week.
The research, published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, highlights the increasing demand for quick meals – such as pre-prepared food and takeaways – as more women entered the workplace. It also shows a significant decrease in the proportion of family income spent on food – and highlights changes in meal preferences over the years.
The revealing picture of Britain’s eating habits is taken from diaries, in which families across the decades recorded their weekly meals for the National Food Survey.
The records show that nearly half of all households never ate outside the home in 1952, and only a fifth had dinner out once a week. By 1983, when the published records end, the average person ate three meals a week out of the house.
The research stretches back to the 1940s, when rationing was in place and families planned meals based on what was in season.
Food was also purchased from butchers, bakers and grocers rather than at supermarkets. Around this time, roughly 33 per cent of household income was spent on food, compared with 12 per cent now.
By the 1950s, Britons tended to eat four times a day and relied on gardens and allotments to grow more than double the amount of food they bought from shops.
Family favourites at the time included salmon sandwiches, tinned fruit with evaporated milk, fish on Fridays and ham salad for high tea every Sunday.
However, by the mid-1950s easyto-prepare meals were becoming more popular, with convenience products accounting for nearly a fifth of family spending on food. As more women went out to work, frozen foods and ready meals began to transform the British diet.
As a result, frozen peas soared in popularity and the consumption of flour started to fall by the 1960s.
But convenience food came into its own in the 1970s as more families could afford fridges and freezers – with 95 per cent owning a fridge by the end of the decade.
Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom, whose department is campaigning to boost the UK food industry, said: ‘This is more than just cosy nostalgia. This hoard of rich data shows how technology and social change have transformed our diets over five generations.
‘While foodie fads have come and gone, it’s interesting to have seen a recent revival of fresh, Britishgrown, seasonal foods – though today it is through choice, unlike the necessity of the 40s and 50s.
‘Our Great British Food campaign is all about championing British produce, at home and abroad, and highlighting the exciting and diverse regional cuisine all around the country.
‘ It’s also about backing our world-leading food and farming industry that already generates £100billion for our economy and employs one in eight people.’