NEITHER OPULENT NOR AUSTERE: ABOUT SIX MILLION EUROS SPENT AT ITALIAN DINNER TABLES FOR THE 2006 FESTIVITIES

Festivities in Italy this year were neither opulent nor austere, with total spending for Christmas and New Year’s dinners reaching nearly 6 billion euros. CIA – the Italian Agricultural Federation – noted that this was an increase of 1.4% in respect to 2005. 100 million kg of pandoro and panettone desserts were consumed, 20,000 tons of pasta, 8,500 tons of cotechino.
Tables were filled with, above all, “Made in Italy” products, often bought with the extra money from holiday work bonuses. And spending was equally divided between Christmas and New Year’s festivities.
These festivities also registered 6 million Italians chose to eat out, with menus that proposed meals for an average of 87 euros per person. At home, the first course cost an overall total of 480 million euros, while the main courses - consisting largely of fish and meat but also the return of poultry, post-bird flu scare – cost Italians 1,370 million euros. Appetizers, mostly made up of cheeses and cold cuts, as well as desserts were also a large part of acquisitions (1,230 million euros). The acquisition of luxury foods like oysters, salmon and caviar, however, dropped by 20%. This year, 960 million euros were spent on fruit and vegetables: dried fruit rose in popularity (+3%), as well as legumes (+2%).
Exotic fruits acquisitions (pineapple, bananas and mangoes), on the other hand, decreased by 22%. The acquisition of traditional sweets remained stable, and Italians confirmed that they prefer typical desserts from pastry shops, and from the Christmas fairs that were visited by 7 million people this year. Most shoppers made their acquisitions in supermarket chains (57%), while some did shop in traditional markets (23%), local shops (18%), and on the internet (2%).