The kombuchas, quinoa salads or photogenic avocado toasts that invade the networks do not correspond to what we actually eat at home. Neither our daily menu nor our pantry has changed that much in recent decades. Furthermore, our consumption habits (marked by conditions such as age, whether we have children or whether we live alone or with someone) do not correspond to those of the majority of the population. So we should abandon this deep-rooted habit of extrapolating what happens to us, as if we were the prototype of society.
These are, roughly speaking, some of the conclusions of an analysis of food consumption habits at home that was presented yesterday on the first day of Madrid Fusión, which this year opens a new space, Madrid Fusión Dreams, to look at in a interdisciplinary approach to the future of food from science and the foodtech ecosystem, and coordinated by Toni Massanés, general director of Fundació Alícia. In addition to the exhaustive study of consumption in homes, other of the most succulent presentations were given by Marta G. Rivera-Ferre, professor, researcher and doctor in Veterinary Medicine and Sociology, who focused her talk on sustainability and pointed out the urgency of implementing an agri-food transition that involves changing the mode of production, focusing on small farms and bringing agriculture and livestock together; as well as the one led by physicist Eneko Axpe, on Artificial Intelligence, in which Ferran Adrià intervened from the audience with stimulating questions.
All this happened on a day in which such successful presentations as those of Eneko Atxa, Andreas Caminada, Paco Morales or the partners of the Barcelona-based company Diseño took place on the main stage of the event. Oriol Castro and Eduard
In the Dreams space, the first of the interventions was given by Joan Riera, food director of Kanter World Panel, who showed an analysis after years of monitoring the actual purchases made daily by 12,000 households. The results show conclusions that reflect daily consumption at home. Nothing to do with the spectacular creations that are shown on the main stage of the congress, but real as life itself.
Although 74% of the participants in the aforementioned study consider that they like to follow a healthy diet, Riera made it clear that it is not precisely health that determines the choice of what we eat. And what moves us? Time seems to be our most precious value and what we end up buying when, increasingly, we choose foods that help us reduce those minutes spent in the kitchen, which in the last ten years have dropped from 28.7 to 25 a day. At first glance it doesn't seem like much but, according to Riera, it is, and the trend will continue downward. The analysis also confirms an increase in delivery.
Convenience is, they warn us, the main factor that marks our food consumption at home, a value that has increased by 6% in the last decade, and is followed by pleasure (which has increased by 2%, especially since the pandemic). and flavor (19%, 0.7 points lower than ten years ago). If we add these last two values we see that 50% of our purchasing decision has to do, therefore, with obtaining a certain pleasure and liking what we eat. Where, then, is the motivation to eat healthy? By 16% (0.7% less than in 2013), followed by the 13% of the habit factor, which has decreased by 10%. As we see, not everything is health. And one thing is the instagrammable image that they show us or that we show, and another is reality.
According to the study, the predilection for buying products that we consider natural and without additives increases a few points, as well as the sensitivity to look for local ingredients, and there is a slight increase in the consumption of packaged organic products, which 69% of Spaniards buy a at least once a year, but it represents only 1.5% of the shopping basket. A basket that we try to fill more and less frequently to save a little time. With regard to spending, it was recalled that not as much is spent as is usually believed, despite the inflationary trend of recent months: if in 1936 food accounted for half of the household budget, it now represents 20%.
It is confirmed that the vegetable alternative already reaches half of the homes, but it does so not so much in the form of those vegetable protein nuggets or burgers that became so fashionable a few years ago, but rather in alternative drinks to cow's milk ( without the same nutritional properties). It is a consumption that is skyrocketing in Spanish homes. It is, surely, the most significant increase along with some products that we find already prepared in the supermarket and that, returning to the precious value of time, simplify the work of consumers. We are referring to bottled gazpacho, prepared broth or ready-to-eat potato omelette, which have skyrocketed in sales in a spectacular way.
Preparing a drink or cocktail at home, but without alcohol, is a real trend that started three or four years ago and has grown by 4.5% since then. There is a market. As there is for packaged potato chips, which had their peak in the pandemic and whose sales have increased by 46% in fifteen years. Quite the opposite occurs with packaged juices, demonized in recent years by nutritionists, whose consumption rates have plummeted without the sector itself seeming to have enough artillery to reverse the trend.
Those consulted show a growing interest in foods or preparations from other latitudes and especially in eating them if they come prepared. What has happened, for example, to hummus or guacamole? They sell them ready to eat in the supermarket and they devastate homes. And the fruits? That the avocado that we mentioned at the beginning is consumed twice as much as it was ten years ago. “There are products and habits that are passing flashes,” Riera recalled. Nothing that really changes the most ingrained eating habits, which are not so easily changed.
That's why our homemade menus are not based on those toasts spread with avocado. What is still eaten at home is green salad (in first place ten years ago and still today, despite a decrease from 13 to 8.3 points), pizza, pasta soup, lentils (they have risen a little because they replace part of the proteins that we no longer look for so much in meat, whose consumption has decreased a little), tomato salad, the ever-so-helpful chicken breast or macaroni.
Several reflections emerge from the analysis of household consumption. We said at the beginning that we should not extrapolate our habits because they do not correspond to those of the majority, but, furthermore, throughout life we change our way of eating, and one of the positive aspects of this change is that as we get older, The greater the interest in eating healthily and the time we have to dedicate to cooking. Of course, as long as we live with others, because it has been shown that people who are alone settle for little.
Habits do not change overnight, it is clear. But it is obvious that offering time is what is contributing the most to the development of food markets. Minutes are gold, or so they sell it to us. There are still 40% of potential customers who prefer to cook potato omelette, broth or gazpacho at home. The market's objective is to go after them.
