A new survey has revealed that the average Briton foregoes five meals a week, with breakfast the most common time to skip food.
That works out at 260 missed meals per person every year, with breakfast accounting for more than 150 of these. Two thirds of respondents said that they skipped meals because they didn’t have time to eat, according to powdered food brand Huel, which commissioned the poll of more than 2,800 adult consumers.
Earlier this month, we spoke to Huel founder Julian Hearn about the brand’s complete nutritional solution, which negated the need to buy, prepare and consume actual food products.
The research additionally found that, of the consumers who said they had missed at least one meal per week, more than half had done so because they had forgotten to eat meals, couldn’t be bothered to cook or prepare food, or because they weren’t very good at cooking or preparing meals. The figures will give encouragement to Huel that there is potential for growth within the segment, with attitudes moving away from cooking and preparing real foods.
Nearly six in ten of those surveyed said that skipping meals caused them to overcompensate at later mealtimes, 43% said that it had caused them to feel short-tempered or irritable, and 35% claimed that they felt less healthy as a consequence.
Huel founder Julian Hearn said: “Food is a great thing which many of us enjoy – but in our everyday routines, we can’t always set aside time, attention and energy to dedicate to our mealtimes. On a typical weekday, it’s not unusual to just grab a coffee while dashing out the door or work through lunch without even realising. Our busy lifestyles, however, are not good for us. If we skip meals we often end up overcompensating later with sugary foods as our energy levels sag.
“We Britons are clued-up on what we should be doing and eating; we know what a healthy lifestyle looks like but, for many of us, it just doesn’t quite fit as much as we want it to. I found myself in those same shoes of wanting to put my health and body first, just not having the time or facilities to do so when I most needed to. This way of thinking is behind our whole venture, and it’s why I decided to come up with a new solution which would be 100% convenient and available on the go with minimal fuss.”
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