Britons Have No Time to Eat in the Morning

A survey has revealed that Britons skip as many as 260 meals per year. Breakfast is the most likely meal to get missed, with the majority of Britons confessing that they just don’t “have time to eat” in the mornings.

The survey was conducted by Huel (www.huel.me), a nutritionally complete powdered food product, as part of their research into consumer habits and attitudes towards nutrition in the UK.

2,829 British adults took part in the survey, all of whom were aged 18 years old or older. All participants were all in full-time employment at the time of the survey.

Initially, all respondents were asked to identify how many meals they skipped in an average week, including Saturday and Sunday. They were able to provide the answer ‘0’ if relevant. The team calculated that the average respondent skipped 3 breakfasts, one lunch and one dinner per week. Extended across the whole year, this would mean that the average Briton skips 260 meals per year; 156 of these being breakfasts, with a further 52 a piece for lunch and dinner.

All relevant respondents who stated they’d missed at least one meal per week were then asked to reveal all the reasons why. The most common answers were given as follows:

1.       I don’t have time to eat – 82 per cent

2.       I forget to eat meals – 73 per cent

3.       I can’t be bothered to cook/prepare food – 68 per cent

4.       I am not very good at cooking/preparing food – 56 per cent

5.       I prefer to snack rather than eat meals – 41 per cent

When asked if they had suffered any adverse effects from skipping meals, more than two thirds of respondents (68 per cent) confessed they had. The majority of these felt they had ‘gained weight’ due to overcompensating after missing meals (57 per cent), while some also felt ‘short-tempered and/or irritable’ (43 per cent) and ‘generally less healthy’ (35 per cent).

Julian Hearn, Founder of Huel, commented: “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 over-compensate later with sugary foods later as our energy levels sag.”

He continued: “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 per cent convenient and available on the go with minimal fuss.”