Ever more Italians are stopping
by supermarkets during their lunch breaks or between one
university lesson and another to buy a ready-to-eat meal,
complete with a single portion of olive oil and disposable
cutlery.
The quality-for-price aspect is mainly what determines this
choice for quick meals away from home, Coop Italia director
Francesco Cecere underscored to ANSA, noting that ready-made
sauces belong to an older generation.
"We have had positive developments," he said, "over the past
few years in both ready-made salads and for organic foods, but
the growing trend - including among the many visitors of Expo
Milano 2015 - are ready-to-eat meals, ranging from pasta to
bresaola with rocket. Take-away dishes tend to be found more
often in shopping carts now, due to the times we're in and the
recovery, than ready-made sauces, except for in such gourmet
options like our sauce with sea bream."
The director of Marketing Coop Italia added that "what is
driving the purchase of these pre-packaged meals is the
convenience, quality-price balance, transparency on the origins
of the ingredients, food safety and quality control."
Italians are especially keen on organic food (+20%), to the
point that organic food "has become a mass consumption item,
with doubled turnover in ten years, which today equals 2.5% of
food sales," according to an analysis of consumption and
spending behavior recently drawn up by the Associazione
Nazionale Cooperative di Consumatori (ANCC)-Coop research
department with scientific collaboration from Ref. Ricerche,
analytical support from Nielsen and original contributions from
GFK, Demos, Doxa and Ufficio Studi Mediobanca.
In the top ten of modern shopping carts, according to June
2015 data on the previous year from the Coop 2015 report, are
packaged focaccia +146%, soy products +62%, gluten-free products
+50%, raw chicken and rabbit +40%, soy drinks +27%, dietary
supplements +22%, chocolate snacks +10%, sliced and cooked ham
+8% and non-sparkling mineral water +2%.
The consumption of vegetarian foods is growing, with 10% of
Italians considering themselves as such (a record in Europe,
followed by Germans). Some 2% say they are vegans - and then
there are also fruitarians, those that eat only raw food, etc.
"We are eating the same quantity of food as in the 1970s
(2.8 kilograms per day), but our diets have changed
drastically," states the Coop 2015 report.
"As a result, the type of consumption is wider. There is
the desire for 'wellness', to be well in a less hedonistic sense
than in the past. We are the slimmest in Europe and among the
longest-living."
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
