Factors influencing food consumption dagger Bahrain
The food consumption pattern of Bahraini households is affected by many factors. Industrialization led to a decline in the agricultural and fishing products with the result of more dependence on imported foods. Income and prices of foods limited the purchasing power of the households, particularly low social classes. The high population growth and family size affect the quantity of food consumed by different household members. Educational level of housewife and husband has also a potent effect on the food consumption pattern. Immigrants have their influence too. They introduced many dishes which have become popular in the Bahraini community. Television advertising of food products and utensils also plays an important role in modifying the food consumption of Bahraini households. This paper discusses some of the factors influencing food consumption in Bahrain.
Food consumption, income distribution and quality effects☆
Abstract Food consumption patterns in Pakistan are analysed for different income classes. Some empirical results confirm the well-known relationship between income and food expenditure. Examination of food expenditure indicates that as income rises, people spend a portion of the increase on larger quantities, but much of the increase goes on higher priced varieties. This has implications for future income generation and redistribution of income.
Food supplies in the United Kingdom
Since the Second World War the Ministry of Food (now the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) has annually a s s e d the United Kingdom’s total supplies of food from all sources, that is, home production plus imports, with deductions for exports, wastage down to the point of measurement and non-food uses, and with adjustments for changes in measured stocks. The totals are divided by the ‘mid-year’ population to give average consumption per head. Imports are well recorded, and sources of information on home production include agricultural censuses and surveys and returns from processors. In order to reconcile the supplies with estimates obtained from consumers, some use is made of the evidence of the National Food Survey, which measures actual quantities of food entering private households in Great Britain. There are at present two ‘yawning’ gaps as regards catering usage and ‘pipeline’ stocks and until these are bridged a full reconciliation of sources is hardly possible. Although both agricultural production and final consumption contribute largely to this exercise, experience has shown that the most convenient point of measurement is neither the frst nor the last; it may be described as the first stage of processing, and the figures therefore represent disappearance into distribution rather than into final consumption. For example, wheat supplies could be measured as grain, as flour or as bread: the convention is to take the supply as the amount of flour produced. No account is normally taken of changes in ‘end-year’ wholesale, retail or household stocks; this amounts to an assumption that such stocks remain unchanged. In exceptional circumstances this assumption has to be abandoned. The movement of total sugar supplies, measured at a primary level, does not give an acceptable profile of consumption after 1973 when compared with evidence of usage, and it appears that after the panic in the summer of 1974 some of the additional supplies of rehed beet sugar arriving towards the end of the year were not sold until 1975. The additional amount entering and subsequently leaving the ‘pipeline’ is estimated at not less than 4 kghead, and in this instance approximately 180 liJ (43 kcal)/head per d (I -5% of the energy value of total food supplies) had to be transferred from that year to the next. The consumption levels enquiry began when this crowded island was under siege, not for the first time. For two centuries, since the Industrial Revolution began, Great Britain has been almost unique among major countries in importing a large proportion of its food, balancing its trade by exporting finished goods and providing services. Between the two World Wars our farmers and fishermen were producing approximately one-third of all the food eaten, and approximately half of