Greeks now eat around 70 kilos of bread per capita
There are some 40 different kinds of bread on sale in Greece, but Greeks don’t eat bread – at least not the sort they used to eat in the past. In the 1950s, the annual per capita consumption of bread in Greece was 210 kilos. When a wider range of foods became readily available and eating habits changed, bread began to play less of a role in the local diet. By the early 1990s, annual per capita consumption had dropped to 64 kilos. Since then, the wide range of bread types on sale and high consumption by immigrants, for whom bread continues to be the basis of their diet, are the main factors that have raised annual consumption again, taking it up to 78 kilos per person. Greeks now spend an average of 306.50 euros a month on food (according to the National Statistics Service in 2005). Of that sum, 22.08 percent goes on meat, 18.4 percent on dairy products and eggs, and 13 percent on flour, bread and cereals. A poll of 515 Greeks over the age of 18, conducted on behalf of the Industrial Chamber of Thessaloniki, showed that around one in two (53.3 percent) of Thessalonians buy bread every day. Of that number, 78 percent buy it from their local bakery, 12.8 percent buy from a bread outlet and 6.2 percent from the supermarket. In contrast with the average European, who wants fresh bread on the table for breakfast, Greeks eat bread primarily at lunchtime. In Thessaloniki, famed for its bougatsa pastry, the sesame bread ring (koulouri) is also hugely popular. Statistics from the union of bakers, which represents 1,000 traditional bakeries in the prefecture of Thessaloniki, koulouri sales bring in 60,000 euros a day, with 150,000 bread rings being sold, mainly at outdoor stands on Tsimiski and other streets downtown.
