Rising food prices change eating patterns

Gawd forbid that I should seek to advise Nutrax on OPing - again.

But, really, ye must make an effort - beyond a headline and a link :)

A wee bit of context in the OP ?

This aside, I've been keeping an eye on the emerging middle class in China and India (and the shrinking of such class in the 'United' States & Queendom).

It would appear that such emergence has seen the price of food 'commodities' rise; and the same emergence sees oil prices rise. (The price of food and that of oil is, perhaps, a separate discussion.)

The context is "here's an interesting story for you to read if you feel like it."

The context appears to be: here's a story I find interesting; so interesting, I cannot be bothered myself, beyond providing a link.

As a volunteer at my local Oxfam shop, we have manual highlighting the people who we help, on display so the average shopper/punter can see it. And overwelmingly it shows people from the lower tier of society, and i suspect very strongly that is the type of people Oxfam are talking about.

54 per cent of overall respondents and a majority of people in most countries surveyed said they are not eating the same food as they did two years ago – the period before the current food price crisis began.

This, relying on people's memories, is not a good way of getting any valid information. It would be better to compare sales of particular foodstuffs in the various countries in 2008 and 2010.

It would be better to compare sales of particular foodstuffs

In Britain, the supermarkets have reduced the size of, say, veg packets but retained the price in some cases - so, people are eating the same, in some cases, but less of it. Major manufacturers have done the same - e.g. the size of chocolate bars.

There is also a growing trend to price packed veg at £1.

(In retrospect, Nutrax, I was being pernickety - nothing wrong with just throwing something up for discussion; so to speak.)

And overwelmingly it shows people from the lower tier of society, and i suspect very strongly that is the type of people Oxfam are talking about.

The majority of the countries were surveyed online, while a few participated through telephone or face-to-face interviews. Online samples were structured to be representative of the online population in the country in question; in some countries this profile will differ from the national population profile due to lower levels of internet connectivity. Results of this research are considered accurate to within 2.1 to 4.4 percent (depending on the country) of the true incidence in the population in question, 19 times out of 20 in each of the 17 countries.

The questions:
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “I no longer eat some of the foods that I 43 did two years ago.”

Why do you no longer eat those foods? Please select the one main reason.
• The food is too expensive now
• For health reasons
• Due to concerns about the way the food is produced
• I don’t like that food any more
• The food is less available now
• Diet has not changed

An interesting detail is that while diets appear to be changing in Kenya, they are not in its neighbour Tanzania.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “I no longer eat some of the foods that I 43 did two years ago.”

It's worth repeating.

TV food and cooking programmes and advertisments by multinational fast food chains has also influenced the consumption habits in developing countries.
Local foods that were previously cheap and readily available might now have been exported and hence costly to buy with stagnant wages for the general working people.
Increase in the cases of diabetes,obesity and cardiac diseases especially increasingly among the younger people would also affect the change in food consumption patten.