Fresh produce sales for 2004 were static and even dropped towards the end of the year, analysts have claimed.
Market watchers Information Resources (IRS) said produce sales, of around £6 billion remained unchanged for most of the year, but fell 2.4 per cent in the final quarter.
A spokesman for the organisation said: “This was despite the bombardment of healthy eating messages. The figures compared with good sales in 2003, although a recent IGD report suggests that while fruit consumption has risen by 3.8 per cent since the launch of the FIVE A DAY campaign in 2000, vegetable consumption has declined by 2.1 per cent.”
The information is gathered from IRS’s InfoScan TotalStore which tracks sales in all the major UK retailers.
