Prague, July 14 (CTK) – The widespread view that Czech seniors are thrifty discount hunters who do not hesitate to cover long distances in search of low food prices is untrue, as their food spending is in fact the highest of all groups of inhabitants, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes on Thursday, citing statistics.
According to the Czech Statistical Office’s (CSU) data for 2015, one pensioner’s average annual spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages reached 29,300 crowns.
Compared with this, the employees spent 23,600 crowns on average last year, and the unemployed only slightly over 19,000, which is 10,000 less than an average pensioner, MfD writes.
Seniors spend more money than employees on almost all kinds of foods except for cheeses, yoghurts and condensed and powdered milk, the figures show.
They spend more even on beer, wine and spirits, and their spending on cigarettes is only 100 crowns lower than the national average, the daily writes.
Experts are not sure about what motivates seniors to buy an increased volume of food.
According to Olga Stikova, expert from the Institute of Agricultural Economy and Information, it is because seniors mostly prepare their meals at home and visit restaurants much less frequently than the economically active groups.
Another, though unverified, explanation is that seniors buy large volumes of food in order to give it to their relatives coming for a visit, mainly in the form of lunches, dinners and snacks, the daily writes.
At the same time, however, surveys show that seniors try to spend as little as possible on food and 47 percent of them seek discounts in this respect.
“This is in accordance with the national average,” the paper quotes Ladislav Csengeri, from the GfK polling agency, as saying.
The explanation of seniors’ high spending may be that they buy cheaper foods but in far larger quantities than what they really need, MfD continues.
This means that a considerable part of the food they bought may end up in a waste bin, it writes.
However, another survey showed the opposite. Seniors are the group that wastes foods the least of all, the survey, conducted for the Food Waste conference last September, showed.
Eighty percent of pensioners either never throw food away or do so a few times a year at the most, the survey showed.
The last possible explanation is the simplest one: seniors not only like to prepare meals for their family members but they also like eating well and abundantly themselves, MfD writes.
Compared with other groups, the old generation spends far less money on recreation, fashion or technologies, and it compensates the gap by spending on food, the paper adds.
