As we’ve all been told many, many times by the food nannies, access to fast food restaurants makes us fat. The food is too greasy, too salty, too tasty for our feeble wills to fight so we just engorge ourselves on those bad calories. We eat too much fast food and we get fat. Case closed. Well, that’s what we’ve been told. Our recent fast food deprivation diets say something else again:
“Camden Fast Food” by It’s No Game is licensed under CC BY 2.0
OK, well, we’ve just had a grand experiment, haven’t we? Peeps haven’t been able to queue at Maccy D’s to get their greaseburger. People have had to – and have had time to – buy actual food and then prepare it for themselves at home.
Which is something that does rather kill the case about those burgers. Because what has been happening is that we’ve been – in the absence of greaseburgers – been eating more.
Using data on millions of food and non-alcoholic drink purchases from shops, takeaways and restaurants, the study found that the pandemic led to calories from restaurant meals falling to zero during the UK’s first national lockdown. That increased somewhat over the summer and declined again as restrictions in the hospitality sector were reintroduced in the autumn.
However, this was more than offset by a large increase in calories from takeaways, which peaked at more than double the usual levels in the UK’s second national lockdown in November 2020.
Overall, people increased their calories from raw ingredients by more than those from ready-to-eat meals and snacks and treats, with the pandemic leading to a shift in the balance of calories towards foods that required home preparation.
It’s that last paragraph that’s important. More home food preparation was being done from raw ingredients. And yet calorie consumption rose.
The report said the most plausible explanation for the sustained increase over the pandemic was higher consumption rather than changes in household composition, food waste or stocking up.
The study is specific to Britain, but it’s highly likely that the same results will be observed in Canada, the United States, Australia, and many other places. But I wouldn’t expect it will be given much coverage, like so much these days that contravenes the messaging that our dying media all seem to prefer to spread.
