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Eight years of a finan­cial cri­sis that shook the world and almost bank­rupted Greece, have also left their mark on the dietary habits of Greek peo­ple. A sur­vey found that con­sumers turned to more afford­able food, and the younger among them have started to drift away from the sta­ples of the Mediterranean diet.

However, the cri­sis is not solely respon­si­ble for the change, as mod­ern eat­ing trends have grad­u­ally down­graded the din­ing rou­tines of con­sumers in the coun­try.

The Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods did a sur­vey among 2,000 peo­ple in Greece. It was found that their dietary habits have been heav­ily affected by the finan­cial cri­sis, both in terms of value and vol­ume. Money spent on food decreased by 21 per­cent from 2010 to 2017, while the quan­tity of food pur­chased went down by 15 per­cent dur­ing the same period.

An impor­tant out­come of the research was that con­sumers have started to dis­avow meats like beef and lamb as their main source of pro­tein, turn­ing to cheaper options like poul­try and legumes. They also pre­fer more pasta and rice than before, while on the other hand, they have cut down on sugar by 44 per­cent over­all.

Consumers low­ered their olive oil intake by 18 per­cent dur­ing the eight years, and con­sump­tion of fruits and veg­eta­bles was also reduced by 23 and 20 per­cent respec­tively.

The researchers held the finan­cial cri­sis respon­si­ble for many of the pat­tern changes, since it affected their pur­chas­ing power and shifted their buy­ing pref­er­ences to cheaper prod­ucts.

Furthermore, it was found that con­sumers are also affected by other para­me­ters, like TV pro­grams about food, social media, advice from super­mar­ket staff, and the press. But more than any­thing they are affected by their fam­i­lies, as one in two con­sumers said their par­ents and other rel­a­tives were their main sources of food infor­ma­tion.

The sur­vey also showed that the Mediterranean diet appeals more to elder con­sumers, while half of those who are younger than 35 years old tended to pre­fer a vari­ety of cuisines.

This depicts a global trend, the researchers noted, where the inter­net and the social media can deliver infor­ma­tion from around the world which would be almost impos­si­ble to reach in pre­vi­ous decades, influ­enc­ing the habits of (mostly) the younger among us.

The sit­u­a­tion is ambigu­ous, and no cer­tain pat­tern can be derived from the sur­vey results.

The major­ity of the respon­dents stated that they pre­fer food that is good for their health, yet they have been mov­ing away from Mediterranean diet prin­ci­ples by buy­ing less olive oil, and fewer fruits and veg­eta­bles, even when prices of the two have dropped in recent years.

They buy more legumes, another Mediterranean diet sta­ple, but this is more a reper­cus­sion of the cri­sis than a con­scious selec­tion.

The sur­vey con­cluded that con­sumers try to bal­ance their desire for health­ier food with their lac­er­ated bud­get. On the other hand, other fac­tors like tele­vi­sion, the inter­net and the press can sig­nif­i­cantly affect con­sumers, dri­ving many to other path­ways than the Mediterranean diet stan­dards.

• IELKA, Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods


• Ellinikigeorgia.gr