Have your eating habits changed due to the recession?

I keep reading on the news that our eating habits are changing due to the recession. According to the news reports, we are generally eating out less, but eating more take aways.We're also switching our food choices at the supermarket for lower cost ones such as downgrading from "supermarket's best" to regular or from regular to "smart price" or budget ranges.

I can certainly vouch for this. Me and Andy used to eat out at least once a week before he lost his job...now it's maybe once a month or less, but we have a takeaway from the local Chinese take away once a week. At first, when we started doing this, I kind of threw a tantrum and paddied a bit. I liked how we could dine out whenever we wanted....call it the positive side of not being able to have kids LOL. But actually I'm quite enjoying eating my take-away in front of the TV, in my cosy winter PJs.

The reports also seem to say more people are going to all you can eat restaurants. Until recently there have been few of them about, but they do seem have exploded in numbers lately....maybe with a corresponding increase in people's waist sizes LOL. Personally I avoid these for hygeine reasons, but also because as a fat person, I feel liek everyone is watching what I'm eating, so I tend to hold back and only get 1 small plate, meaning that I don't tend to get good value for money. I wonder if I'm the only fat person that does that? Maybe I'm just paranoid, but you'll never see me making a pig of myself in public. According to this report, the average number of plates eaten at Taybarns (like Golden Correl) is 3.37. Now call me a wimp, but even I couldn't fit that in, so I'm wondering how people who don't normally pig out are fitting that in....ok, I digress...

As for the supermarket choices, well we watched an interesting program on TV about 2 families who downgraded their food choices and had to survive off supermarket budget range food. At that time we were buying all regular brand, with some supermarket brands and some of the luxury brand foods like "Tesco Finest". Anyway, in the TV program, the family said they couldn't really taste the difference at all, so that spurred me and Andy into trying out some of Asda (Wallmart) budget range. We did come across some really awful items in this range, such as basically anything with processed meat and their fruit yogurts...but many of them such as the pita breads and natural yogurt were the same as the regular range. And in the case of the chicken, it tasted BETTER and had a nicer texture than the regular range, that was a complete surprise. We'll never buy the regular chicken again.

So talk to me, I'm interested in this. How have your food habits changed? Are you eating in more? Have you downgraded your food choices? Would you consider downgrading?