While the related subject of celebrity chefs was examined in The Impact of Celebrity Chefs on Cooking Habits, Market Intelligence, July 2002, this is the first time that Mintel has examined this particular subject in a Special Report. The report examines the range of influences on trends in eating and uses Mintel’s own primary consumer research to examine attitudes and changes over time and to answer the core issue of the influence of media on British eating habits.

Mintel’s research considers a number of potential influences on trends in cooking and eating habits. These include the population’s composition by age and by socio-economic group, earnings and the economy, employment levels, the demand for convenience, trends in eating out, the incidence of foreign travel, cooking skills, health issues, and, of course, the influence of TV and other media.

It offers food manufacturers and retailers an analysis of consumers eating habits that can be directly transferred into effective marketing plans, segmenting consumers into defined cook types for superior targeting. Mintel’s revealing findings include:

Respondents are more likely to say they always cook from scratch (24% of those surveyed) than to prefer using prepared foods (11%). There are time constraints on that though, with 22% agreeing they spend more time on food preparation at the weekend and 21% choosing quick meal ideas during the week.

Men are just as likely as women to be adventurous in their cooking and almost as keen to try new recipes but very substantially more likely to never cook or only rarely cook (although both are equally likely to do very little cooking or cook only rarely during the week).

The most important reasons cited for diet changes were personal and family health concerns (47% and 38% of respondents), which were followed by improvements in the range of foods that are available (35%), and seeing new ideas on TV or in print media (27%).