Twice a year, we conduct in-depth research into how the British public eats, cooks and shops for food. We began surveying both our audience and the general public in 2017, and now have over 40,000 completed surveys to draw data from, totalling over two million answered questions. This gives us an unparalleled insight into the UK’s relationship with food, and how the attitudes and habits of the modern-day foodie have shifted over the past few years.

This is our eighth white paper, which focuses on trends such as veganism, vegetarianism, food waste, plastics and sustainability, and how foodies are engaging with these topics. We also look at how confident foodies are (both in their own cooking ability and their knowledge of food trends) and how engaged they are by food-focused media in print, on TV and online. What we discovered was that the 13 million foodies in the UK are becoming more self-aware as a demographic, and that while only six percent of the UK follows a strict vegetarian or vegan diet, there has been a huge increase in the number of people regularly eating vegan or vegetarian dishes.

Food waste and single-use plastics have been hot topics in the news lately, and this is having an impact on how foodies shop and cook. The number of people in the UK who strongly agree that they are reducing their plastic waste rose from 34% to 37% in the past twelve months. Amongst Committed Foodies, however, this number rose from 55% to an incredible 68%. These increases are mirrored when it comes to cutting food waste, proving that both foodies and non-foodies are becoming more conscientious when shopping and cooking.

Take a look at the video below to watch chef Chantelle Nicholson and Great British Chefs’ own Amanda Burningham talk through our research into these topics, or scroll down further to download our white paper in full.