How Britain's diet has changed over the past 40 years

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has just released 30 years of food diaries filled out by families, alongside survey data running until 2014.

The types of food and amounts thereof that make up our typical diet have changed drastically over the years.

As the Open Data Institute has reported, with some fantastic visualisations of the data, traditional staples of potatoes, eggs and butter have fallen in popularity in our diet, supplanted by alternatives.

We consume far more condiments, fruit and cereals than we used to, while our consumption of bread has been dropping gradually since the 70s.

The three biggest risers by category were as follows:

We eat far less potatoes than we used to, which by mass was the staple of our 70s diet, whereas we have consumed more alcohol and fish over the years.

The three biggest fallers, over the years, were as follows:

Meanwhile, our consumption of cheese, confectionary and vegetables has remained relatively stable over the years.

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