Ready-to-eat organic meals gain in popularity

(ANSA) - Rome, October 6 - Ever more Italians are stopping by supermarkets during their lunch breaks or between one university lesson and another to buy a ready-to-eat meal, complete with a single portion of olive oil and disposable cutlery. The quality-for-price aspect is mainly what determines this choice for quick meals away from home, Coop Italia director Francesco Cecere underscored to ANSA, noting that ready-made sauces belong to an older generation. "We have had positive developments," he said, "over the past few years in both ready-made salads and for organic foods, but the growing trend - including among the many visitors of Expo Milano 2015 - are ready-to-eat meals, ranging from pasta to bresaola with rocket. Take-away dishes tend to be found more often in shopping carts now, due to the times we're in and the recovery, than ready-made sauces, except for in such gourmet options like our sauce with sea bream." The director of Marketing Coop Italia added that "what is driving the purchase of these pre-packaged meals is the convenience, quality-price balance, transparency on the origins of the ingredients, food safety and quality control." Italians are especially keen on organic food (+20%), to the point that organic food "has become a mass consumption item, with doubled turnover in ten years, which today equals 2.5% of food sales," according to an analysis of consumption and spending behavior recently drawn up by the Associazione Nazionale Cooperative di Consumatori (ANCC)-Coop research department with scientific collaboration from Ref. Ricerche, analytical support from Nielsen and original contributions from GFK, Demos, Doxa and Ufficio Studi Mediobanca.
    In the top ten of modern shopping carts, according to June 2015 data on the previous year from the Coop 2015 report, are packaged focaccia +146%, soy products +62%, gluten-free products +50%, raw chicken and rabbit +40%, soy drinks +27%, dietary supplements +22%, chocolate snacks +10%, sliced and cooked ham +8% and non-sparkling mineral water +2%. The consumption of vegetarian foods is growing, with 10% of Italians considering themselves as such (a record in Europe, followed by Germans). Some 2% say they are vegans - and then there are also fruitarians, those that eat only raw food, etc.
    "We are eating the same quantity of food as in the 1970s (2.8 kilograms per day), but our diets have changed drastically," states the Coop 2015 report. "As a result, the type of consumption is wider. There is the desire for 'wellness', to be well in a less hedonistic sense than in the past. We are the slimmest in Europe and among the longest-living."