German nutrition habits

Over the last deca­des, issues like sus­taina­bi­li­ty, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and mindful­ness have beco­me more pre­sent in Ger­ma­ny. The­re­wi­th, the health-con­scious beha­vi­or of the con­su­mers rose and due to their demand, the ran­ge of who­le­food pro­ducts and who­le­food shops grew. Even the sel­ec­tion of healt­hy foods and bio­lo­gi­cal ori­gi­na­ted pro­ducts in drugs­to­res expan­ded. So various stu­dies sur­vey­ed dif­fe­rent age groups with regard to their nut­ri­ti­on habits, pre­fe­ren­ces, the sub­ject coo­king and more ali­men­ta­ry-rele­vant ques­ti­ons. We loo­ked into it and sum­ma­ri­zed the results of the studies.

While gro­cery shop­ping, the food choices are not only deci­ded by the animal’s wel­fa­re label or the bio-label – even though they are get­ting incre­asing­ly important; espe­ci­al­ly the fla­vor is of importance to Ger­mans. Bes­i­des, the­re is an upward trend of buy­ing more regio­nal and sea­so­nal pro­ducts obser­va­ble during the last years. Par­ti­cu­lar­ly weekend mar­kets of local pro­du­cers are sui­ta­ble for this. Most of the Ger­mans pre­fer­a­b­ly buy their ever­y­day gro­ce­ries in a super­mar­ket, becau­se it is sim­pli­fy­ing mat­ters by being able of buy­ing ever­y­thing at once. Ano­ther reason is, that the majo­ri­ty of the inter­view­ed per­sons want a good value for money when it comes to food.

But what kind of food gene­ral­ly ends up on Ger­man plaits? Well, for coo­ked meals it is pri­ma­ri­ly tra­di­tio­nal plain Ger­man fare, which means coo­ked pota­toes with meat and gra­vy. More than every other Ger­man eats meat pro­ducts every day. On the con­tra­ry, fish is only con­su­med by one out of 20 peo­p­le per day. Other die­ta­ry pro­ducts like bread and sand­wi­ches are other favo­ri­tes, which like to be sna­cked on. Ter­tia­ry are milk and milk pro­ducts like yoghurt and cheese. The­se three foods are on the dai­ly menu of over 80% of the inter­view­ed per­sons. The list con­ti­nues with fruits and vege­ta­bles, which are also eaten quite often.

Whe­re­as eight out of ten Ger­mans can eat wha­te­ver they pre­fer, some may be forced to fun­da­men­tal­ly chan­ge their diet becau­se of food into­le­ran­ces or all­er­gies. That is why peo­p­le with food into­le­ran­ces are com­pa­ra­tively coo­king more often than peo­p­le wit­hout the­se into­le­ran­ces. All in all, only every second Ger­man has time to cook. Espe­ci­al­ly the working popu­la­ti­on is often too stres­sed out and in shorta­ge of time and the­r­e­fo­re tend to use fas­ter die­ta­ry alter­na­ti­ves (i.e. fro­zen food) or eat out.

Many peo­p­le also lack the time and rest as well as the nee­ded stami­na for a las­ting healt­hy diet. Addi­tio­nal­ly, many con­sider a con­scious diet as more expen­si­ve and time-con­sum­ing, but that is not ine­vi­ta­b­ly the case. Within the health-con­scious inha­bi­tants, espe­ci­al­ly women pay atten­ti­on to the food and the own pre­pa­ra­ti­on of it. Men on the other hand sta­ted more often, that they are not able to cook. They also pre­fer to eat more meat pro­ducts than fema­le con­su­mers. Regard­less of gen­der, it is also appa­rent that youn­ger respond­ents bet­ween 18 and 39 years of age in par­ti­cu­lar tend to eat rea­dy-to-eat and fro­zen pro­ducts more often than other age groups. But regard­less of whe­ther they coo­ked them­sel­ves or defros­ted the food: nine out of ten Ger­mans pre­fer to eat at least once a day with peace and enjoy­ment within their own four walls. Peo­p­le are less likely to eat on the go: one in five say they do so regularly.

The­re is one par­ti­cu­lar cir­cum­s­tance, that still needs to be work­ed on urgen­tly: every year in Ger­ma­ny, around 18 mil­li­on tons of edi­ble food are thrown away. This is equi­va­lent to appro­xi­m­ate­ly 313 kg per second (!). Three-quar­ters of this is due to bad plan­ning alo­ne, i.e. the best-befo­re date has been excee­ded or the food has been bad.

With the SEAWATER Fish we would like to con­tri­bu­te to an over­all increase in the awa­re­ness of the Ger­man popu­la­ti­on for high-qua­li­ty and healt­hy food. By estab­li­shing a decen­tra­li­zed sup­p­ly net­work with fresh and regio­nal­ly pro­du­ced sea fish, we also aim to mini­mi­ze trans­port distances and waste.