Swiss households spent 35 per cent of their budgets on food during the Second World War, a figure that today is only about seven per cent, a study has found.

Published by the Federal Statistics Office, the study said that modern households spend 13 per cent of their budgets on alcohol and on eating and drinking outside the home.

It added that one in eight people working in Switzerland was employed in the food and drink sector.

The study said the 7.7 million inhabitants of Switzerland consumed 5.5 million tons of food and drink a year, excluding mineral water. Of that, a fifth was milk and milk products.

It found that the average Swiss annually consumed an average of 140 kilograms of milk and milk products, as well as 94kg of vegetables, 70kg of cereals and 53kg of meat.

Consumers spent SFr55 billion ($56.8 billion) on food, beverages and eating outside the home in 2005 compared with SFr50 billion in 2001. During that time, the population grew by 6.1 per cent.

In 2008, a household spent SFr660 a month on food and non-alcoholic drinks, SFr460 on eating out and SFr70 on alcohol.

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