New research reveals change in consumer cuisine preference
However, Chinese food still dominates the UK takeaway scene.
Based from Future Thinking’s annual Grocery Eye 2017 study, Italian cuisine has overtaken Chinese as the UK’s favourite food with 61% voting for it, versus 60% who favoured Chinese.
Indian continues to hold on to the number 3 spot, whilst Mexican (39%) and Spanish (35%) are rising up the popularity stakes, taking fourth and fifth place respectively.
Rounding out the top ten cuisines were Thai (30%), Greek (new in with 30%), Japanese (25%), French (24%), and American BBQ with 18%.
The traditional fish and chip shop is continuing to lose its place as the British takeaway of choice, as Chinese, pizza and Indian nudge it down to fourth place. The top six ranked takeaways were: Chinese, Pizza, Indian, Chip Shop, Burger / Fried Chicken, and Kebab / Greek / Turkish as the last.
The research comes from Future Thinking’s annual Grocery Eye 2017 study, which surveyed 2,009 respondents to identify their perceptions towards purchasing food and drink.
Catherine Elms, senior research director at Future Thinking, said “British consumers love their variety, especially when it comes to food. Italian has now overtaken Chinese as Britain’s favourite cuisine, after tying last year, but we’re also seeing further increases in popularity for Mexican, Spanish and Japanese dishes.”
The Grocery Eye study also found that the falling pound and rising grocery prices could reduce healthy eating, with only 28% of consumers planning to eat more fruit and vegetables this 2017, a drop of 10% from 2015. Over half (54%) of British consumers said that making healthy food cheaper would be necessary to encourage them to eat healthier.
“With the falling pound putting greater pressure on the purse strings, UK consumers are finding it increasingly difficult to buy healthy options. The perception that healthy foods are considerably more expensive than unhealthy foods is a significant barrier that brands need to overcome, with two thirds of consumers saying they see healthy foods as more expensive than unhealthy foods and over half saying they need healthy food to be cheaper if they want to eat healthier,” Elms concluded.
Photo credit: Eating on Samui
