Survey reveals the nation is spending £18 billion a year on takeaways

New research reveals that we remain a nation who love a takeaway, with over half (55%) reaching for the menu drawer as a way of treating ourselves. In fact the new survey, commissioned by Alaska Seafood, reveals that UK homes consume four takeaway and ready meals a week, meaning the nation is spending £18 billion pounds each year on them.  

The statistics are worrying as an obesity epidemic sweeps the nation. The result of parents coming home from a hard day’s work is that 1 in 10 children are also eating takeaway meals three times a week. 

It’s not just families that are reaching for the takeaway menu, however. University students are eating a staggering 5 takeaways/ready meals a week! Not only are the calories cause for concern, but so too is the cost. Students are spending a staggering fifth of their annual maintenance loan on takeaways alone. 

Unsurprisingly two in five of them (61%) don’t tell their families at all what they eat whilst away at university and a third (30%) admit to not telling their family the whole truth about what they eat whilst living away from home. 

So why are cooking from scratch less? Lack of confidence in the kitchen plays a big role.  A fifth of us (21%) aren’t confident when it comes to cooking a healthy meal such as a fish dish, with 22% admit to not even knowing how to cook fish.  16% of respondents order takeaway because it is ‘quicker than a home cooked meal’, and a further 16% see them as ‘easier than a home cooked meal’. 15% order takeaways when they don’t know what to cook, and 11% order in when they don’t know what to cook. 

40% of students say that they’re put off from cooking because ‘it takes too long’, and 40% say that they ‘don’t have the time’ to cook. 30% simply ‘can’t be bothered’ to cook, and a quarter (25%) say they can’t afford the ingredients they need to cook from scratch. 

Women were more likely to have cooked more meals from scratch, whilst men had, on average, more takeaways and ready meals. 

View the full case study here to find out how we carried out this research and the coverage it generated.