FROM condensed milk to Cinzano, fish fingers to fromage frais, our shopping habits have most certainly changed over the decades. Or have they?

For 80 years the Office for National Statistics has been using a notional ‘Basket of Goods and Services’ to help measure the rising and falling cost of products and services. Since 1947 it has been recording the prices of everyday items on a ‘national shopping list’, to help calculate consumer price inflation.

This has provided a fascinating insight into our shopping trends as a nation as each year the ‘basket’ –identifying our most popular products - was published.

To make it into the ‘basket’ of goods today consumers have to spend around £400million a year on the item or service but when it all began, just two years after the Second World War ended, rationing was still in place and meant families had to make do with what they could get.

To that end condensed milk was a popular choice for shoppers. Although it was rationed, condensed milk was high in protein and fat and lasted longer than fresh milk. Surprisingly condensed milk stayed in the annual ‘basket’ until 1982 as in later decades it became a popular and cheap and dessert topping.

By the time the Sixties arrived, the humble fish finger was a basket champion. Fish fingers entered the basket in 1962 and are still there today. A decade later “Smash” became a basket favourite. Boosted by the successful advertising campaign which featured a Alien creatures laughing at humans creating mashed potato in the traditional and laborious way “For Mash Get Smash” saw the product stay in the basket from 1974 until 1987 when it was overtaken by frozen oven chips.

Another basket biggie of the late Seventies/early Eighties was Cinzano. Again, the popularity of the alcoholic Vermouth drink was bolstered by a famous commercial, this time starring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins, who featured in the TV adverts from 1978 to 1983. During this time turnover sales of Cinzano increased by a whopping 50 per cent. However, by the end of the Nineties Cinzano had all but disappeared from the basket, overtaken by more exotic drinks and beers.

In the Eighties, as a new generation of keep fit enthusiasts emerged, museli entered the basket for the first time in 1987, when comedian Lenny Henry became the face of Alpen. Fromage frais and French set yogurts were also big hitters during this decade thanks to the memorable Chamboucy advert.

The basket’s contents are reviewed every year to help ensure it accurately reflects consumer shopping patterns.

When it began in the Forties, only 65 food and drink items were includes, compared to 150 last year. In 2015, Nespresso-style coffee pods and crème liqueurs, such as Baileys, made it in for the first time. Also making a first time appearance of pouches of ready cooked rice and lemons.

Some staples of the fridge and cupboard, however, such as bread, milk and tea have never left while others endured the test of time, such as canned corned beef which was in the very first basket in 1947 and was only removed in 2005.

  • Check out what has made it in and out of our shopping baskets over the past 80 years by clicking here.