Inflation is also paid at the table: the Italians have reduced food in quantity and quality

Italian people of gourmets. Or maybe not anymore. Yes, because bills are not only made at the bank, post office or tax office, they are also and above all made at the table. Inflation does this too, depriving the world’s most pleasure-loving people of certain flavors that until recently were hard to give up. And so, according to research by Coldiretti and Censis presented on the occasion of the XX Forum on Agriculture and Food held in Villa Miani yesterday and today, due to high prices, more than one Italian in two (52%) has cut food at the table in quantity or quality, with a disruptive effect that weighs especially on low-income families. With inflation hitting consumer food prices hard, 47% of Italians have been forced to cut the amount of food purchased, but if we consider the low-income segment of the population, the percentage rises to 60%, while for those of high income drops to 24%. Alongside those who were forced to put less food in their carts to pay the bills, there are also 37% of Italians who preferred to save on quality (46% in the case of low incomes, but only 22% for high incomes). 🇧🇷

These waivers “are, therefore, socially differentiated according to a logic of social food inequality, with adults and young people cutting much more than the elderly, and low-income people more than the rich. Furthermore, more than six out of ten Italians among those who cut purchases are convinced that this situation will last at least throughout 2023”, reads the study. In the ranking of products most affected by the ax of consumers, alcoholic beverages are in first place, of which 44% of Italians have been forced to say goodbye, in whole or even in part. In second place are desserts, which decreased by 44% in quantity, while in third place are sausages, which 38.7% of citizens gave up, immediately ahead of fish (38%) and meat (37%). And to think that, also according to Coldiretti, food has become Italy’s first wealth worth 580 billion euros in 2022, despite the difficulties associated with the pandemic and the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. That is, Made in Italy at the table is already worth almost a quarter of the national GDP and, from farm to table, involves up to 4 million workers in 740,000 farms, 70,000 food industries, more than 330,000 restaurants. But we must defend it, the made in Italy.

For this reason, the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, on the sidelines of the same Forum announced the war against synthetic foods, explaining that the council of Crea (Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of the Agricultural Economy) «approved a resolution that invests in research to understand what would be the effects of products made in laboratories that take into account what American scientific studies say, but also to verify that these products, as someone says, do not harm or harm our fellow citizens from a health point of view”.