What do people eat in the UK?
Most of the UK starts with tea and toast or cereal, eats a sandwich at lunch and has dinner around 18:00 to 19:00. The classics are the full English, fish and chips and a roast on Sunday.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
On a weekday most people have cereal, porridge or toast with a mug of tea. The full English, with eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, tomato, mushrooms and toast, is a weekend or café breakfast of about 850 kcal. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own versions with tattie scones, laverbread or soda farls.
Lunch
Lunch is quick, usually between 12:00 and 14:00. The supermarket meal deal, a sandwich, a snack and a drink for one fixed price, is how many office workers eat. Soup, a jacket potato with beans and cheese, or a pub lunch are the other usual choices.
Dinner
Dinner is between 18:00 and 19:30 in most homes. Pasta, pies and curry are everyday meals, and chicken tikka masala with rice, about 800 kcal, is one of the most ordered takeaways. On Sunday many families have a roast: beef, chicken or lamb with roast potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire pudding and gravy, about 900 kcal a plate.
Starters
At home most meals have no starter. In pubs and restaurants you see soup with bread, prawn cocktail, pâté on toast or a Scotch egg, a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and breadcrumbs, then fried. At Christmas, prawn cocktail and smoked salmon are the classic first courses.
Desserts
Dessert is called pudding, and it is often hot and served with custard. Sticky toffee pudding, about 500 kcal a portion, apple crumble, trifle and Eton mess are favourites. Afternoon tea, started by the Duchess of Bedford around 1840 to bridge the gap to a late dinner, brings scones with jam and clotted cream, about 430 kcal each.
Drinks
Tea with milk is the national drink, at around 100 million cups a day across the UK. In the pub people order pints of ale, bitter, lager or cider, and a pint is 568 ml. Scotland is known for its whisky, and gin has made a big comeback with small distilleries all over the country.
Street food
The UK has more than 10,000 fish and chip shops, and about a quarter of people eat fish and chips every week: cod or haddock with chips, salt and malt vinegar, about 1,000 kcal. A bakery sausage roll of about 330 kcal, a Cornish pasty and a kebab after a night out are the other usual things to eat on the go.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Baked beans on toast is a normal breakfast, lunch or dinner. In the north of England the evening meal is called tea, and dinner can mean lunch. A crisp sandwich, crisps inside buttered bread, is a real lunch, and around Edinburgh chips come with salt and sauce, a mix of vinegar and brown sauce.