What British people eat

A" fry-up" is a phrase used informally for several items fried together. The most common items are eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, and even bread. It is not always accompanied by 'chips' (the normal British word for French fried potatoes). The British eat rather a lot of fried food.

Although it is sometimes poetically referred to as 'the staff of life', bread is not an accompaniment to every meal. It is not even normally on the table at either lunch or the evening meal. It is most commonly eaten, with butter and almost anything else, for a snack, either as a sandwich or as toast (a British household regards toasting facilities as a basic necessity). On the other hand, the British use a lot of flour for making pastry dishes, both savoury and sweet, normally called pies', and for making cakes.

Eggs are a basic part of most people's diet. They are either fried, soft-boiled and eaten out of an 'egg cup", hard-boiled (so that they can be eaten with the fingers or put into sandwiches) or poached (steamed).

Cold meals are not very popular. To many British people, preserved meals are typically 'Continental'.

It is common in most households for a family meal to finish with a prepared sweet dish. This is called either 'pudding', sweet' or 'dessert' (class distinctions are involved here). There is a great variety of well-known dishes for this purpose, many of which are served hot (often a pie of some sort).

The British are the world's biggest consumers of sugar— more than five kilograms per person per year. It is present in almost every tinned food item and they also love “sweets” (which means both all kinds of chocolate and also what the Americans call “candy”).

When people eat what: meals

Again, generalizations arc dangerous. Below is described what everybody knows about - but this is not necessarily what everybody docs!

Breakfast is usually a packeted 'cereal' (e.g. cornflakes) and/or toast and marmalade. It isn't usually a 'traditional' British breakfast.

' Elevenses ' is, conventionally, a cup of tea or coffee and some biscuits at around eleven o'clock. In fact, people drink tea or coffee whenever they feel like it. This is usually quite often.

Lunch is typically at one o'clock (any shops which close for lunch close from one to two). But it is often a bit earlier for schoolchildren and those who start work at eight o'clock.

For the urban working сlаss (and a wider section of the population in Scotland and Ireland) tea is the evening meal, eaten as soon as people get home from work (at around six o'clock). For other classes, it means a cup of tea and a snack at around four o'clock.

' Supper ' is the usual word for the evening meal among most people who do not call it 'tea'.

'Dinner' is also sometimes used for the evening meal. It suggests something rather grander and eaten comparatively late (at around eight o'clock). It is associated with relative formality (many people talk about 'Christmas dinner', even if they have it in the middle of the day). It is also sometimes used to refer to the midday meal in schools.

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