The average Brit skips five meals a week, or as many as 260 meals a year, according to a new survey.
Breakfast is the most likely meal to be skipped, in spite of repeated claims that it is the most important meal of the day, and two-thirds of those who skip meals did so because they 'don’t have time to eat.'
The research was conducted by Huel, a firm which makes a nutritionally-enhanced powdered food product, as part of its research into consumer habits and attitudes towards nutrition in the UK.
Nearly 3,000 British adults took part in the survey, all of whom were aged 18 years old or older, and all participants were in full-time employment at the time of the survey.
Initially, the 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 Huel team calculated that the average respondent skipped three 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 breakfast, with a further 52 apiece for lunch and dinner.
All relevant respondents who stated that they’d missed at least one meal per week were then asked to reveal 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 confessed that 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).
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