An apple a day keeps the boredom away – how food got us through the pandemic

Food has always punctuated our days; we rise with breakfast, take a midday reprieve with lunch and put the working day to rest with dinner. During lockdown, one day blurs into the next without little opportunity for distinction. With one exception – what we eat. 

The first lockdown will be (somewhat unfondly) remembered for everyone’s sudden baking frenzy. Unsure what to do with ourselves, many of us began baking banana bread and preparing sourdough starters with unfounded enthusiasm. Yeast and flour were so in demand there was a black market. Data suggests 44% of people in the UK are cooking more during lockdown, 47% are eating with family or housemates more often and over half of us are valuing food more. Covid has forced us to reevaluate our relationships with one of life’s simplest necessities.

For many, this hasn’t been a good thing. The pandemic accentuated financial struggle. In November, a government survey found 1 in 5 respondents reported cutting down on meals for financial reasons. Food insecurity was reportedly experienced by 38% of 16-24-year-olds in the same month and food insecurity across the country increased by 6% between August and November. Being able to rely on good food to weather the lockdown storm is undoubtedly a privilege, but data collected by Tesco from the start of the pandemic shows more than half of the 2,000 participants exploring new ingredients and two-fifths enjoying cooking more than ever before. If new can afford it, comfort-food matters more needed than ever. 

From shopping to cooking and eating, every step in creating a meal has provided an escape from the nightmare that is Covid-19. As a non-vulnerable young person, I visit some sort of supermarket almost every day. Admittedly, it is hard to go on a walk in much of London without passing at least one Sainsbury’s local, but the big Sainsbury’s and Lidl also offer something to do. It’s a building I can enter that isn’t my own home. I look forward to our weekly trip to Asda in Battersea with an enthusiasm previously saved for nights out (I know, how sad). When London was in Tier 3 and social walks were allowed but the weather was wet and cold, I heard stories of first dates being held in the aisles of Waitrose. Walking for hours up and down the tinned food aisle getting to know one another without freezing to death or (technically) breaking the law.  

In my twenty-somethings flatshare, our lockdown feeding-regime has fallen into a comfortable pattern. Big cooking projects are saved for the weekend – doing something laborious and time-intensive helps mark the break from work. Sweet treats and major indulgences are (meant to be) saved for the weekend too. Cuisines are tackled one by one; sushi now means a trip to the local Asian supermarket and a bamboo mat at home, rather than a packet swiped from Waitrose in the middle of the working day; Italian means homemade pasta dough, rolled out with a wine bottle as we don’t have a rolling pin and Mexican means ordering sombreros and tequila to enjoy alongside the tacos. Sundays are spent texting our mums like the housewives we swore we’d never be, asking for that sticky toffee pudding recipe or the secret to roast potatoes, as we try for the fourth weekend running to make the perfect roast. 

Our fleeting freedom was, of course, marked by food too. During Eat Out To Help Out (EOTHO) we frequented our favourite restaurants with ardour. Over 160 million meals were discounted in August. But there’s no such thing as a free (half price) lunch, and August’s food frenzy was followed by a seemingly endless lockdown that dragged a dying hospitality industry back down.

With restaurants closed we have grappled with ways to support the hospitality industry. For many, the obvious solution was an increase in takeaways. According to Ipsos Mori, 23% of consumers report eating takeout and home-delivered meals from locally-owned restaurants more often. During the first nine months of 2020, 123.2 million takeaways were ordered through the food delivery service Just Eat – up 27% compared to the first nine months of 2019.

 This might not paint a particularly healthy picture of the locked-down Brits that will be emerging from lockdown in a few months, but there has been a spike in healthy and organic eating too. The organic vegetable box delivery service Abel and Cole reported a 25% increase in sales in the last year, with competitor Riverford reporting a surge in demand too. In July, the government-supported evidence suggested “excess weight can increase risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19”, so healthy food seekers might be in part motivated by that. This follows a pattern evidenced during previous food and health scares. SARS, for example, led to a spike in demand for organic foods in China (and Asia) in 2004.

Food has always been important to me, but I never truly appreciated the entertainment, distraction and escapism it could provide beyond mere necessity. When life returns to a banana on the tube for breakfast, Pret sandwiches for lunch, and the nearing pay-day beans on toast for dinner, our miscellaneous kitchen cupboard, stuffed full with adventurous ingredients, will tell the tale of a time when cooking and food guided us through a global pandemic.