The new year is well and truly underway and supermarkets are teeming with calorie-conscious, protein-heavy foods to help people kickstart their 2025.
Consumers are turning to their favourite supermarkets to aid their health and fitness goals, but one retailer has reported a change in their shopping habits that may actually surprise you.
Waitrose claims many customers are turning away from low-fat, highly processed products in favour of less-processed, whole food ingredients.
In other words, it’s “back to basics” for a lot of shoppers who are often inundated with the proposed benefits of swapping full fat milk, for example, to skimmed.
“There’s been a lot of bad press around so-called ‘healthy’ products which aren’t nutritious and don’t taste great, however the growing awareness of ultra processed food in our diets has seen many customers seeking the basics and embracing a much simpler approach to their diet,” Maddy Wilson, Director of Waitrose Own Brand explained.
Whole milk and full-fat Greek yogurt sales are up 11 per cent and 21 per cent compared to skimmed milk and Greek style yoghurt a year ago, the supermarket said.
Block butter is up 20 per cent compared to dairy spreads and brown rice has seen a seven per cent hike compared to white rice. Meanwhile, 20 per cent more breakfast-lovers are swapping white bread out for sourdough.
It comes after researchers pinpointed exactly how much time common ultra-processed foods can shave off your life. Astonishingly, the University of Michigan study found that each time someone eats a hot dog, it costs them an average of 36 minutes of lifespan, while cured meats like prosciutto could cost you 24 minutes of life.
Fancy a Diet Coke with that? Sadly, that’ll cost you an additional 12 minutes.
More than 10,000 people in Scotland die each year from unhealthy diets and obesity is the leading cause of death in Scotland, accounting for 23 per cent of all deaths, according to Public Health Scotland.
In Scotland, UPFs include soft drinks, packaged snacks, reconstituted meats, and frozen dishes, according to Food Standards Scotland.
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