About the market

Eating out may not at the centre of current health debates as boozing and smoking, but over-indulgence in this market has certainly been in the spotlight in the early 2000s. Reports of rapidly rising obesity, particularly among children, have been linked with fast food, and the government’s White Paper (Choosing Health, November 2004) includes recommendations for restricting ‘junk food’ advertising in addition to a raft of proposals for improving the health of the nation.

Healthier eating may be set to be enforced from above by Parliament, but this report also looks at consumer motivations for a healthier lifestyle that can impact on the UK’s massive, and ever-growing, market for eating outside the home.

A basic feature of the market in the past has been for people to treat themselves indulgently when eating out – the ‘blow-out’ curry after a pub session, the takeaway deep-fried fish and chips, with scant thought for calories or fresh vegetables – even while shopping ever more fastidiously for safe, healthy food in the supermarket. Now that eating out has become a part of the routine lifestyle for so many households, the indulgence factor is like to come under more pressure than ever before.