5 December, 2025

Remember Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO), the government scheme introduced in 2020 to help revive the hospitality sector after lockdown? It did succeed in getting people back into restaurants, but new research shows it also inadvertently increased London’s air pollution. And also shone a light on a completely unexpected aspect of dining out.  

A recent study found that on EOTHO nights, levels of cooking-related particulates (fine pollution particles) surged across the city. Commercial cooking is generally overlooked in air-quality policy, even though it was first identified as a meaningful pollution source in London and Manchester more than 15 years ago. Current estimates suggest that around 8% of London’s particle pollution comes from commercial kitchens, potentially more when wood and charcoal cooking are considered. EOTHO simply made that invisible impact suddenly visible. 

But the real story here is around how our understanding of impact shifts over time, even when business activity itself stays largely the same. Thousands of restaurants didn’t suddenly change their equipment or menus in August 2020; what changed was the context, the scale of activity, and, crucially, our understanding of its effects.  

This is a reminder that impact isn’t a static checklist. It evolves as new evidence emerges, as behaviours shift, and as we learn to see familiar activities through a different lens. For hospitality businesses, this may mean reconsidering what “material impact” really includes. For everyone else, it’s a nudge to stay open to re-examining long-held assumptions. 

By Sirisha Venkatesh