What the UK public care about when it comes to food — 15 min summary.
A Bright Harbour Collective effort authored by Caitlin Connors, Laura Malan, Muriel Esposito, Claire Madden, Christian Reynolds, Nefeli Trikka, Mel Cohen, Faun Rothery, Siobhan Canavan, Sammy Saint Warrens, Fan Sissoko, Efun Coker, Sarah Tulej, Rebecca Birch and Claire Sheppard.
With thanks to our brilliant partners at the FSA and FSS for their support and guidance: Elham Mirzahosseinkhan, Sophie Watson and Susan Bond.
What do the public care about when it comes to food — 2 years into pandemic?
Our world has changed quickly and deeply in recent years, posing a challenge for decision-makers who seek to understand and effectively support the public.
As researchers guiding evidence-based decision-making, it is increasingly clear to our Bright Harbour teams that it is not enough to establish ‘what matters most, to the most people’. We also need to articulate and honour the needs, views and priorities of those most affected — but whom often go unheard by policy makers and decision-makers. The people already under pressure, often increasingly so, under the status quo. Those most likely to be left (more) vulnerable as the winds shift.
In this post, we summarise the key findings from 6 months of exploration of UK people’s experiences, concerns and priorities around food. Research was commissioned by our long-standing partners at the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland, who have an extensive history of evidence-based, participatory policy making. Findings draw on nationally representative, large-sample quantitative and qualitative data — but also more targeted discussions with groups most affected, marginalised and/or less likely to be heard by food system decision makers.
This post summarises the key research findings
We explore overall drivers of current public attitudes, experiences and concerns plus 4 key public priorities:
- Equitable access to safe, affordable, healthy food
- Ensuring high-quality food safety, hygiene and standards
- Guiding fair, ethical and sustainable food systems and futures
- Making it easier to access and choose healthy, nutritious food
Want to know more?
Findings have already shaped the FSA’s 2022–2027 strategy. Its mission has expanded to include a role in helping shape a healthier and more sustainable food system. The strategy affirms the FSA’s belief that everyone, regardless of personal circumstances, should have access to food they can trust.
The FSA/FSS have generously made the full project outputs openly available: full research and technical reports, national findings for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland (coming soon); full survey data tables; and more stories from the public about their every-day experiences of the issues.
**If you want a deeper understanding, get in touch any time. We promised our participants, who shared of themselves honestly and sometimes with great vulnerability, that we would share their views as far and wide as we can. Many of them deeply wanted to be heard, especially by people with the power to change things. We would love to talk.
What we did: method and sample
Data were gathered using multiple methods over several stages of research. We explored issues with representative public samples but also ‘boosted’ representation of groups that are often ‘less heard’ by decision makers.
A rapid mapping of existing evidence
A ‘People’s Voice Board’ of 8 UK people who guided us throughout
75 ‘general public’ participants engaged in qualitative research via group workshops, remote ethnography tasks, and 1–1 depth interviews
20 ‘targeted groups’ participants (people with health/mental health issues and/or disabilities; ethnic minorities; younger and older adults; and the less digitally confident) were engaged via depth interviews and remote ethnography
A nationally representative online survey of 6175 UK respondents validated and extended qualitative research findings
Key context: what’s shaping views in this moment
The time and context of this work have shaped public experiences and views on multiple levels, as summarised below. Individually, each of these contextual drivers are complex, powerful and nuanced. Collectively, they reflect profound changes to public context generally and around food. These changes are not equally experienced; in practice, the time and cash available to people deeply shapes their agency and choice, particularly around food.
We ask readers to keep this wider context of change, uncertainty and instability as shaping the views expressed in our research.
Systemic challenges require systemic action
The wider contextual challenges outlined in this chapter are largely beyond the scope of any one body to address. Food poverty and social inequality can’t be solved by a single Department or simple policy change; they are systemic challenges requiring collaborative, sustained action. However, current public realities must be taken into account by decision makers seeking to support the public’s interests and needs around food.
Price often wins out as people juggle competing drivers
People found it extremely difficult to ‘juggle’ competing drivers (for example price, value, budget, convenience, health and so on) and make choices aligned with both their shorter and longer-term interests and concerns.
There was a sense that ‘no choice is perfect or easy’. The tasty meal may not be healthy; the healthy meal takes too long to make; the quality meal is too expensive; etc. At the same time, many also found it difficult to access trustworthy information and guidance to shape their food choices — making it harder to navigate these pressures.
The net result of ‘juggling’ these layered interests was that food choices felt pressured and complex for many. Most people wanted to meet as many needs as they could, but acknowledged that trying to reconcile multiple needs at once took time and energy — privileges not equally available to all.
For most, this meant that price frequently won out as a driver of food choices, driving uncomfortable compromises around health, environment, and wider ethical values. For some more pressured groups, price also drove sacrifices around ‘basics’ like safety or sufficiency.
Existing concerns are being amplified by wider contextual uncertainty and pressure — plus low trust in food decision makers.
A sense of increased pressure on everyday people was evident across all nations of the UK, equally in rural and urban areas, and across all levels of society. In many qualitative groups, financial pressures in particular were causing visible distress.
Concerns seemed to be amplified by an increasing lack of trust that key food decision-makers have the public’s best interests at heart. The public worried that our food systems and decision-makers (including both food businesses and ‘Government’) prioritise profit over people, even while trust in the FSA & FSS remained strong.
Only 53% of survey respondents agreed they felt ‘optimistic about the future’.
56% of survey respondents expressed concern for the future over ‘the power of big food manufacturers and retailers’.
Only 32% of people trusted the Government to ‘act in their best interests’.
Only 14% saw the Government and 11% saw local authorities as a trusted ‘source of information about food’.
For information about food, 47% of people trusted the FSA and 51% trusted the FSS.
Food security is under threat — reflecting but also potentially *entrenching and widening* existing social inequalities
Food prices were a growing point of deep public concern and worry. Most people were feeling at least some level of financial pressure around food choices at the time of fieldwork (November-January 2022).
76% of people chose ‘the price of food’ as a concern for the future of food over the next three years.
Several workshops had to be paused for participant safeguarding reasons due to visible distress about the impact of recent food price rises or worries about future food costs.
20% of survey respondents spontaneously mentioned food prices as an area of future concern — well ahead of any other spontaneous mentions — and price came up continuously in our qualitative research.
65% of survey respondents had modified their food behaviours as a result of financial concerns for example changing to cheaper brands, cutting back on calories, or making more meals from scratch.
28% of respondents in this research reported behaviours associated with low or very low food security. For example: reduced quality or variety of food, not eating when hungry, or skipping meals for financial reasons.
Food insecurity was more prevalent among people on lower incomes; with long-term health conditions; younger respondents (Gen Z/Millenial); people in larger households; and for Asian, Black, African and Caribbean people.
Whilst people on higher incomes had more agency and were better able to afford food that fit their values and had greater access to wider choice, many had also experienced rising costs, food shortages and/or increasing financial pressure or uncertainty. Access to food seemed less taken for granted than it was a few years ago — for some a source of deep public concern.
The UK public’s 4 key priorities around food
Given the pressures outlined above people tended to prioritise their immediate needs and concerns on a day-to-day basis: ensuring the food they ate was safe and as healthy as it could be for the budget they had to spend.
For many, financial or time pressures limited the attention (and purchasing power) available to put towards ‘wider issues’ like health, the environment, or our food systems. Despite this, concerns were deep-seated and deeply felt. This disconnect between values and food behaviour was a source of significant discomfort for many.
Priority area 1: Equitable, affordable access to safe, healthy food
Concerns related to rising prices, the affordability of healthy food and social inequalities dominated discussions — viewed as fundamental to the public’s ability to access food they can trust, or to shop their values.
Ensuring ‘healthy food at affordable prices’ was the top priority for action for food industry, and the second-highest priority action for ‘Government’.
68% saw the cost of healthy food as a major concern for the future
64% of people cited ‘food poverty and food inequality’ as a concern for the future of food in the UK over the next three years.
76% chose ‘the price of food’ as a concern for the future of food over the next three years. Concern was even higher for those already more likely to be food insecure.
Notably, this was a top priority area even for those who were highly food secure, likely reflecting both concern for others as well as an increasing sense of diminishing affordability even for the more ‘well off.’
Researchers noted that higher income groups were often having the same kinds of conversations we would usually associate with lower-SEG groups around food — for example, switching to ‘bargain’ brands or cheaper supermarkets, or finding ways to ‘stretch’ meals out with cheaper ingredients.
This ‘story’ presents a conversation between participants in one of our workshop sessions that gives a sense of some of these ‘cutting down’ behaviours amongst better-off people — with Heinz baked beans increasingly being considered a more ‘luxury’ item.
Priority area 2: Ensuring high-quality food safety, hygiene and standards
Food safety, hygiene and standards were seen as priority public interests that needed to be represented and protected: no one wants food that will make them unwell or is produced to questionable standards. In the minds of the public, ‘high standards’ were also associated with better health impact, and more ethical, sustainable practice. Key findings in this space were as follows:
Public trust in current UK food safety, hygiene and standards was high.
Participants in qualitative groups assumed ‘someone’ was looking after food safety, hygiene and standards for the greater good; reassured by signals of oversight such as on-door food safety ratings for restaurants.
79% agreed with ‘I trust that the foods sold in shops are made and stored according to good food safety standards’.
78% agreed with ‘I trust that the places I eat or buy from are handling food safely and hygienically’.
Qualitatively, people also perceived UK food hygiene and safety standards as ‘higher’ than those in other countries — especially around hidden ingredients, hormones and food cleaning (for example chlorinated chicken).
However, those already feeling exposed have less trust in food safety
Lower income and less food secure people expressed more concern overall. Concerns around safety, hygiene and standards were higher across a number of measures for people on lower incomes (less than £19,000 annual household income) and/or those who were less food secure.
These concerns seemed linked to wider concerns and worries about ‘risky’ practices employed to help make money stretch: for example eating or freezing about-to-expire food; batch cooking; buying ‘lower quality’ foods, etc. Worry might also have been influenced by a general sense of precarity more widely; many had nowhere else to compromise in their food budgets.
Many worry about whether standards will be maintained post-Brexit. Across the quantitative and qualitative research, there were concerns that post-Brexit, ‘poor practice’ from abroad will increasingly decrease the safety and quality of food available in the UK. Participants in the qualitative research widely wanted high standards upheld in the future.
50% expressed major concerns about food standards post-Brexit.
44% explicitly stated that high standards of food safety and hygiene across the food chain are important to them for the future
For many ‘safety’ was a broad topic; they also wanted action on wider issues such as processed food or animal welfare. Concerns around the long-term health and safety implications of processed foods were widespread, with many wanting action in this space. Qualitatively there was a sense that fair treatment of animals in the food chain goes hand-in-hand with good food safety and quality standards; that the mistreatment or mishandling of animals in the food system would have an effect on us down the line.
61% expressed concerns about the ‘over-processing’ of food in the future
47% stated they would like to see regulatory action in order to ‘reduce things added in the food process e.g. E-numbers, preservatives’.
60% also rated treatment of animals in the food chain as a major concern.
Priority area 3: Guiding fair, ethical and sustainable food systems
The public didn’t feel much agency in terms of their wider interests around food system ethics and environment. Their values in these spaces tended to be sacrificed for more immediate drivers, especially in response to financial pressure.
Accessing trustworthy information in this space felt hard. Many did not trust the information provided by food businesses, and on-pack information about environmental impact and animal welfare weren’t easy to understand, or didn’t include the kinds of information people wanted. For example, participants noted that it was hard to get a sense of things like ‘food miles’, land use, hormone or pesticide use, and so on.
The public wanted the Government, food industry and the FSA/FSS to work together to guide fair, ethical, sustainable food systems and futures on their behalf. People wanted to see decision-makers maintain or strengthen ethical standards in the food chain, for example around animal rights — both for UK-made and imported food products.
Most immediately, people wanted to see protection for British farming post-Brexit — and were eager for support for more ‘local’ food systems (UK origin).
59% said they were worried over the future of British farming
58% expressed concerns over the UK’s dependency on food imports.
More broadly, climate and animal welfare concerns dominated. Qualitative research showed that interests and concerns in this space felt increasingly more immediate and more relevant to more people than we have seen in previous years. Climate worry was clearly experienced as an urgent concern for participants in their 20s through to people in their 80s.
60% of people worried about the environmental impact of our food systems
58% cited the impact of climate change on food production as a major concern for the next 3 years
41% chose ‘a food system that treats animals in the food chain with dignity’ as a key action area for the next 3 years.
Many participants expressed deep worry and anxiety about the increasing impact of climate emergency — and that we might act ‘too late’ in terms of changing our food systems and choices to avoid or mitigate harm.
For example, when completing ‘future of food’ tasks and asked to describe the food futures they feared for the UK, some participants described fairly dystopian outcomes, in which profit motives and lack of public engagement had failed to mitigate climate disaster. Many also expressed concern about disproportionate impact on those already vulnerable, both in the UK and globally.
Food waste and packaging waste were a common point of concern; these issues seemed to ‘push a lot of buttons’ at once.
78% reported finding it ‘unacceptable’ to throw food away at home.
67% agreed with ‘I try to reduce or avoid food products that create plastic waste’.
65% said they worry about packaging waste in the food chain in future.
64% cited food waste in the food chain as a major concern for the future.
Waste felt like an issue that individuals could have some individual impact on — but there was also eagerness for more systemic change. Many in the qualitative research were critical of the ways in which current food systems encouraged what they saw as ‘poor practice’ on waste. For example, participants raised discussions around:
- Feeling ‘pressured’ by promotions which encouraged food waste.
- Food being wasted by retailers that could go to those in need.
- Low-waste options being positioned as more premium and expensive.
- Low-waste options being unrealistically inconvenient for many.
Ethical treatment of food system workers is potentially an emergent concern.
46% saw treatment of workers in the food chain as a major concern.
32% cited fair treatment of these workers as a priority over the next 3 years.
48% chose ‘ensure fair treatment for workers, farmers and small producers in the food chain’ as a priority area for action from the food regulator.
Priority area 4: Making it easier to access and choose healthy, nutritious food
As above, price dominated within health and nutrition concerns, with many feeling ‘priced out’ of the food they thought was best for their health. Beyond price, the public also felt it was far harder than it should be to make healthy, nutritious choices; that the ‘system was stacked against them.’ However, guidance on healthy nutrition tended not to feature highly in ratings of priority actions. Key findings in this space:
Most wanted to eat healthily and feel they broadly know what ‘healthy’ food is. People wanted to live healthy lives, even if this requires effort .
63% agreed they were ‘prepared to make big changes to their lifestyle in order to be healthier’.
70% also agreed that they felt ‘confident I know what a healthy nutritious diet is for me’ — qualitatively, a healthy nutritious diet was typically associated with ‘fresh’, minimally processed food and wide variety.
However, making healthy, nutritious food choices feels challenging in practice. Price and other pressures often pushed out health and nutrition ideals.
53% agreed that they felt priced out of healthy food and 31% endorsed ‘it is difficult to find fresh foods that fit my budget’.
54% agreed with ‘supermarkets encourage me to buy unhealthy foods’.
25% agreed with ‘heavily processed foods are often the only option available to me’ and 50% reported worry about the long-term impact of their food choices on their health (significantly higher for those aged 18–44 (60%) or from BAME ethnicities (61%).
A majority also felt confused or misled by industry information about ‘healthy food’. A range of issues were raised around interpreting and navigating health information (for example overwhelm, text size, portion confusion, ‘hidden’ sugars’).
61% stated they often felt ‘that foods labelled as ‘healthier options’ (e.g. low fat, low sugar, plant-based meat alternatives) were unhealthy in other ways’.
Guidance to support healthy choices often feels unhelpful or ‘too simplistic’ Advice often felt more theoretical than practical, not reflecting modern pressures, conflicts, tensions, health needs, personalised diets, and so on. More financially pressured respondents particularly were interested in ‘real life’ guidance for eating on a budget: support to navigate abstract ‘rules’ into actual shopping decisions.
The UK public are very capable of weighing in on the decisions that affect their lives.
We thank the FSA for their continued dedication in listening to the UK public, including those who are often less heard by policy-makers — and for their trust that the public can and should meaningfully set priorities for policy and wider action.
Food systems issues, like many other complex issues involved in modern policymaking, are not beyond the reach of everyday UK people to discuss, debate and shape.
Work like this, that genuinely engages a wide cross-section of people across the nations, sets the stage for far more effective decision-making, more resonant public policy, and more tailored communications.
We are very grateful to have been involved and to our FSA colleagues for their support and guidance throughout.
