Cheese 1

[webofevil]

I’ll admit, this took me by surprise. When the initial question was tabled, several of us in the office took one look at it and thought: no way. Given the number of sensible requests the government refuse to answer every day on the grounds of cost—as well as the many extremely silly ones—we figured this one would obviously end up forgotten at the back of the legislative fridge and be allowed to grow so mouldy that no-one would even dream of, um, constitutionally eating it. Imagine, then, our astonishment, not least at the speed with which this response materialised:

Baroness Byford asked Her Majesty's Government:

For every year since January 2002, what has been the average consumption of cheese per person (a) daily; (b) weekly; and (c) annually. [HL1260]

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): The table below shows the average household purchases of cheese per person per day, week and year. These estimates are based on records of consumer purchases from the expenditure and food survey.

Average household purchases of cheese per person in grams:

	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
Daily	16	16	16	16
Weekly	112	112	113	110
Annually	5,833	5,807	5,868	5,720

And you’ll be as excited as I was to learn that “estimates of weekly purchases in 2005-06 will be published here on 18 January”.

Comments

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

NB: It isn't clear whether this daily purchase amount also includes cheese as an ingredient in, say, frozen pizzas, or whether it purely refers to cheese qua cheese. Nor is it clear whether the figure covers the kind of processed cheese that contains little or no actual dairy produce. Really we need another Written Question pinning the department down on exactly that kind of detail to clear this all up. Otherwise, how will we know how much cheese we all eat?