Context: On August 7, during a working trip to the Vileika District, Aleksandr Lukashenko criticized rising prices in Belarus. According to official statistics, prices have only increased by a few percent since the beginning of the year. However, he was particularly concerned about the price of vegetables, which are essential to the population. The price of white cabbage has increased by 38% over the past six months. The prices of onions and beets have increased by 24% and 17%, respectively. These types of increases are normal during the off-season and occur every year.
On August 10, 2026, the First News Channel claimed that people in the West were “deliberately reducing their food consumption to curb price increases.” Vasilii Koltashov, the director of the Russian Institute of a New Society, said that people in Western countries have started eating simpler, less substantial meals.
“In 2025, as well as in 2024 and 2023, prices for food, oil, and everything else were falling. Food prices, grain prices in particular, were falling because, for example,consumption of meat and cheese is declining. Diets are becoming simpler. And that’s a meager ration — a very meager ration — which, as doctors say, is also lacking beneficial nutrients our bodies need. In other words, this is unacceptable. However, from an ideological standpoint, it is acceptable. This ideology has been used, is being used, and will continue to be used to mask declining consumption in the West,” Koltashov stated.
First, let’s talk about prices. Following the crisis year of 2022, food prices in the EU increased rather than decreased. Food prices rose by 12.7% in 2023. In 2025, the upward trend continued, though at a significantly slower rate of 2.8%.
Now, let’s look at the “meager ration.” The situation with meat consumption in Europe is stable. For many years, the average EU resident has consumed about 66–70 kg of meat per year. Although the composition of their diets has shifted, with beef and pork being partially replaced by poultry, consumption has remained high in recent years. Data from the European Commission on the meat market does not support Koltashov’s claim of a decline in consumption.
Cheese is not disappearing from Europeans’ diets either. According to the European Commission, the average person in the EU consumes approximately 21 kg of cheese per year. This figure has increased by about 1 kg over the past five years and by approximately 6 kg per capita over the past 25 years.
The situation with fish is different. Across the European Union, fish consumption has declined over the past decade. According to data from the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products, the average consumption of fish and seafood in the EU was 22.89 kg per person in 2023 — a ten-year low and 2.7% less than in 2022. But here, too, the picture is more nuanced than a general “meager ration”: fish consumption has actually increased in most Eastern European countries.
As for olive oil, there have been no signs of a sustained decline in consumption over the past 10 years. Olive oil consumption in the EU remains at around 3 kg per person. There was a decline in consumption during the 2022–2024 seasons, when olive oil prices rose significantly due to poor olive harvests.
Moreover, Europeans are increasingly purchasing organic products, despite their higher cost. According to estimates by the research firm IMARC Group, the European organic food market reached $63.1 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $139.4 billion by 2034. The projected average annual growth rate from 2026 to 2034 is 8.94%. This is difficult to reconcile with the claim that people are broadly switching to a “meager diet.”
* The First News Channel is another name for News.by, a news outlet owned by Belteleradiocompany.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
