Euromonitor International has released new 2015 data for the Fresh Food industry, revealing that fresh fruit and vegetable consumption fell in the EU from the previous year.
Simone Baroke, contributing analyst at Euromonitor, pointed out that although the European Parliament had granted an extra €20m annually to promote healthy eating amongst children, the consumption of fruits and vegetables across Europe had seen a decline.
Per capita volumes of fresh fruit and vegetables sold through retail outlets, consumer foodservice outlets and institutions (including schools) declined by 2 per cent in Western Europe over the 2010-2015 review period, Euromonitor said.
Across Eastern Europe, per capita volumes of fresh fruits plummeted by 20 per cent and fresh vegetables by 4 per cent over the same period.
Among the EU markets with the most pronounced declines in per capita volumes of both fresh fruit and vegetables were Italy, Spain and the UK, Baroke said.
'The allocation of extra funds with the objective of making children’s diets healthier is certainly encouraging,' she outlined. 'But will it help to resolve one of Europe’s most pertinent public health problems that is childhood obesity?
'The problem (besides children’s love for sweet and fatty snacks, etc) is that the human stomach is elastic in design and that is very easy to overeat by several hundred calories a day. In the long run, a daily chocolate bar may mean the difference between a lean child and a podgy one, and the apple eaten during morning break at school is not going to magically cancel out half a packet of cookies devoured in the afternoon.”
Looking at the worldwide picture, Euromonitor said that its research indicated that the global demand for fresh food exceeded 2.2bn tonnes in 2015, a 2 per cent growth on 2014.
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