Feeding eating-out prejudice

Don't believe everything you read in the media ' or in research, for that matter. Nevertheless, ignore the uncomfortable news at your peril.

A case in point is the story that eating out is being directly linked to rising obesity. It came from a report from Datamonitor that argued that although 65% of Europeans and North Americans had made active attempts to eat healthier food during 2006, they were unwilling to sacrifice enjoyment, particularly when dining out.

As consumers eat out of home more regularly, the survey concluded, the desire to eat healthily was more likely to be compromised. A reasonable concern, perhaps? But it can just as easily be argued that food consumed out-of-home has very little effect on the nation's diet.

Although out-of-home food may account for around a third of all food spend, the UK Government's own figures from the Office of National Statistics reveal that when it comes to actual food purchases, 'eating out' accounts for less than 10% of total purchases of food and drink.

More importantly, people derive on average only 11.2% of their daily energy intake, excluding alcohol, from food and drink bought for consumption out of home. It's all there in the Family Food in 2005-06 report, published last year by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The inference is that the obesity problem starts in the home not in pubs, restaurants and sandwich shops.

In fact, the impact of the eating-out market on excessive eating appears to be lessening. The amount of energy intake that the population gets from eating-out actually fell by 2.9% last year and has decreased by 9.8% since 2001-02,m according to those same ONS figures.

This may all sound rather nerdy, but it is important in painting a factual picture of the eating-out sector, and providing some much needed perspective.

We know that out-of-home sales of alcoholic drinks have been falling, but so too have sales of potatoes and confectionery while out-of-home sales of fruit are up.

The problem is that there appears to be no concerted effort from the restaurant or wider foodservice market to refute this type of research, or at least to put it into some sort of context.

As long as that happens, the public is likely take the original story at face value. That's why such reports can't be ignored. Left unchallenged they continue to portray the eating-out sector in a bad light.

The obesity link story followed hot on the heels of a report from the National Consumer Council that showed that many sandwiches on sale in high street chains contained what it considered dangerously high levels of fat and salt. It quoted, for example, a Pret a Manger dry-cured ham cheese and mustard sandwich containing 584 calories, 13.1g of fat and 2.55 of salt ' more on all three counts than a Big Mac.

This might be worrying if people only ate out of home and only consumed one type of food. But if you put those salt, fat and calorie levels in context, is the picture actually that bad? The salt content might be high, but that Pret sandwich would only account for 19% of a woman's recommended daily fat intake and 30% of daily calories ' which if that constituted lunch what's the problem?

The government recommends that adults should eat 6g of salt a day. Recommended daily intake of fat is 95g a day for men and 70g a day for women. The recommended daily calorie intake is 1,940 calories per day for women and 2,550 for men.

As a Pret spokesperson said: 'People like to treat themselves once in a while.'

But refuting or contextualising these type of assertions is one thing, trying to avoid them in the first place is another. As this column has argued before, the eating-out market could do itself a favour by doing more to address public fears over issues such as the sugar, salt, fat and calorie content of meals.

As Michael Hughes, author of the NCC report, said: 'More often than not, restaurants do not disclose the nutritional content of their food and drink. This means that even if consumers do attempt to eat healthily, they are at risk of over indulging because of a lack of knowledge about food content.'

It's a fair point. The NCC said sandwich shops should be 'upfront and clear' with nutritional information, and now Pret has said it will be handing out leaflets with nutritional information from next month. More could do the same.

If Weight Watchers can produce booklets listing the nutritional value of a selection of meals from branded chains, why can't those groups follow suit, or at least highlight the low salt, fat and calorie options to provide more consumer choice and guidance?

Food is shaping up to be a major battleground, and the eating-out industry has to be prepared to fight together on all fronts, refuting and explaining more vigorously on one hand while being smarter about facing legitimate consumer concerns on the other. What it can't do is give the initiative over to its opponents.

First published on M&C Report Online 10/02/08