Nov. 10, 2022
This is Gallup Reporter Resources, a comprehensive compilation of all Gallup findings on the issue of the day, edited by Justin McCarthy.
Not a subscriber? Sign up today.
The holiday season is just around the corner, which means lots of cooking and eating are in store in the coming months. Throughout Gallup's history, our polls about kitchen table issues have often quite literally been about Americans' habits at the kitchen table.
News reporting like yours is critical to the world's understanding of issues related to food, cooking and nutrition.
Gallup is here to help -- we have a variety of resources available to enrich your coverage through historical findings in the U.S. since 1939, as well as global insights on food, cooking and nutrition.
*A note to subscribers: Gallup Reporter Resources will return once more this year -- in December for a special holiday edition -- before returning to its normal schedule in 2023. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, and hope you take some time to enjoy this 1973 New York Times profile of the Gallup family Thanksgiving: “In the opinion of the Gallup family, their mother's cooking is favored 100% by every member.”
What are Americans' diets like?
Very few Americans are vegetarian.
In measures from 1999 to 2018, between 5% and 6% of Americans considered themselves to be vegetarian, and 2% to 3% considered themselves to be vegan. Liberals, lower-income Americans and young adults were among the groups most likely to consider themselves vegetarian.
But many Americans (23% in 2019) have attempted to cut back on meat -- mostly for health reasons, but also for concerns about the environment, food safety and animal welfare. Among those eating less meat, most have cut back by eating smaller portions of meat, substituting vegetables or eliminating meat entirely from some meals. Many Americans have tried plant-based meats.
Nearly two in three Americans report having one or more cups of coffee per day.
Gallup measures from 1999 to 2015 found that 63% to 64% of Americans report having at least one cup of coffee each day, with the average number ranging from 2.5 to 2.9 cups daily. Relatively few coffee drinkers (10%) said they want to cut back. Adults aged 55 and older are among the biggest coffee consumers.
Little attention is paid to nutrition labels at restaurants -- but labels on food packages from stores receive a fair amount of consideration.
In 2018, less than half of Americans (45%) said they pay attention to nutrition details at restaurants, similar to the 43% found in 2013. But 70% said they pay attention to nutrition labels on food packages.
Women, college graduates and wealthier adults are more likely to report paying attention to nutrition labels in general.
Nearly all Americans report trying to include vegetables and fruit in their diet.
A 2018 poll found that majorities of Americans report trying to add vegetables, fruits, poultry and fish to their diet while avoiding soda and sugar the most among a list of 15 foods Gallup tested.
"These data suggest that Americans are well aware of what they should be eating and avoiding according to nutritional guidelines, but don't confirm how successful Americans are at actually following through on their good intentions," said Gallup Senior Editor Megan Brenan.
Family gathering for dinner was the norm for the vast majority of American households in recent years.
Family dining was a part of everyday life for the majority of U.S. parents, and hadn't diminished much in Gallup polls from 1997 to 2013. In the last update in 2013, 53% of adults with children younger than 18 said their family ate dinner together at home six or seven nights a week, while an additional 28% ate four or five meals together each week.
Married parents reported eating dinner at home with their family more often than unmarried ones. Parents who worked full time dined slightly less frequently with their family than those who worked part time or who didn't work. Also, parents aged 35 and older enjoyed fewer family dinners than did younger parents.
The use of online grocery shopping, which rose sharply during the pandemic, has continued to increase.
The way that Americans get the food they eat continues to evolve, as frequent in-person grocery shopping and dining out, which both dropped last year, are now closer to their pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the public's use of online grocery shopping on at least a monthly basis, which rose sharply last year, has continued to increase.
Despite this latest uptick, online grocery shopping remains much less common than in-person shopping, dining out and ordering takeout from restaurants. Meal preparation kits are used less than all other methods.
Two in three Americans drink alcoholic beverages -- and majorities always have in Gallup's trend since 1939.
In 1939, the first year Gallup asked the question, 58% of U.S. adults said they drank alcoholic beverages "such as liquor, wine or beer." Since then, majorities have consistently said they do, with the percentage imbibing no lower than 60% since 1997. The percentage of drinkers reached a high of 71% in the late 1970s.
That said, broad majorities of Americans believe the use of alcohol adversely affects both society in general and drinkers specifically.
The question about alcohol use was not asked in 2020 when COVID-19 lockdowns may have impacted drinking habits. The latest 67% reading, from a July 2022 Gallup poll, is a slight uptick from 2021 when alcohol use was at the low end of the narrow range of readings.
U.S. alcohol consumers are split into three groups: those who have consumed an alcoholic beverage in the past 24 hours (30%), those who have had a drink in the past week (36%) and those who say they last had a drink more than a week ago (33%). In 2022, U.S. drinkers report having 3.9 drinks in the past seven days, which is roughly in line with the readings historically.
Beer remains the American beverage of choice -- but it's now a close race with wine and liquor.
Beer has outpaced liquor and wine in nearly every reading over the past three decades. But the gap is narrower in 2022 as beer consumption, at 35%, is at its lowest level by one percentage point. The reading has been as high as 47% in the early 1990s when Gallup first asked the question.
Wine drinkers comprise 31% of all drinkers. The 30% of U.S. drinkers who favor liquor as their drink of choice is a new high in the trend, also by one point.
Can a home-cooked meal change people's lives?
Since 2018, Cookpad, in partnership with Gallup, has been trying to answer that question by studying home cooking trends worldwide.
Gallup and Cookpad's latest report, A Global Analysis of Cooking Around the World, explores the cooking habits of people worldwide during an uneven return to "normal" in the second year of the pandemic. The analysis leverages four years of trends on how cooking habits vary regionally and across countries, painting a more accurate image of what cooking at home looks like in over 95% of households around the world.
The global gender gap in cooking is narrowing.
Women are estimated to cook as many as 4.3 more meals per week than men, but men have steadily increased their frequency of cooking from 3.9 in 2018 to 4.7 in 2021, while women have decreased their frequency from 9.1 in 2018 to 8.7 in 2021.
Europe and Latin America cook the most, while Arab States cook the least.
The region that cooked the most in 2021 was Northern, Southern and Western Europe, with 7.8 home-cooked meals on average per week. It was closely followed by Latin America and the Caribbean at 7.6 meals per week.
The region that cooked the least in 2021 was Arab States at just 4.8 meals per week. This region has consistently ranked last since 2018.
The regions that saw the largest decrease in weekly cooked meals were Southern Asia and South-Eastern Asia and the Pacific, whereas Eastern Asia saw an increase by the same magnitude (0.5 meals per week).
Venezuela leads the world in cooking.
Venezuela was the country with the highest frequency of cooking in 2021 (at 8.9 meals per week), whereas Jordan was the country with the least (at 2.5). Venezuela also sat near the top of the list in 2020 among the countries that cooked the most.
Lithuania saw the largest increase in the weekly frequency of home-cooked meals -- an increase of 1.4 meals per week. Indonesia saw the largest drop in the weekly frequency of home-cooked meals, with a decrease of 1.4 meals per week.
World Hunger and Severe Food Insecurity Grew in 2021
The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report (SOFI) shows that 2021 brought further setbacks in global food security.
The report released in July draws on data from many sources, including food security data collected for the FAO in the Gallup World Poll, to provide the latest update on the world's progress toward ending hunger and ensuring food security in the second full year of the pandemic.
Although the pace slowed, the proportion of people facing hunger continued to rise in 2021.
After remaining basically unchanged for five years, the prevalence of undernourishment -- the FAO's traditional indicator of the extent of hunger -- increased between 2019 and 2020. It kept rising in 2021, although at a slower pace than the year before.
The war in Ukraine could make hunger worse for millions.
FAO simulations suggest that in a severe-shock scenario, 13 million more people could be undernourished in 2022 -- and reach as high as 19 million more in 2023. Populations already facing hunger and food crises -- in sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East and North Africa -- are most at risk of higher undernourishment.
Overall food insecurity remained mostly unchanged, but severe food insecurity increased.
The 2021 data show that overall food insecurity remained stable, but severe food insecurity -- which means people had run out of food or, at worst, gone a day without eating -- rose. Severe food insecurity increased from 2020 to 2021. An estimated 923.7 million people faced severe food insecurity in 2021, up 73.6 million from just the year before.
The Global Diet Quality Project bridges a critical gap in global diet quality data.
Unhealthy diets are a top risk factor for death and disability globally, but despite the direct connections among diet quality, health and sustainable development, most countries lack routine, current and comparable data on what people eat.
The findings from 41 countries surveyed in 2021 -- detailed in a new report, Measuring what the world eats: Insights from a new approach -- offer a lens into the ways diets around the world are unhealthy, where they are unhealthy, and among which populations.
The Diet Quality Questionnaire (DQQ) collects standardized data for indicators of dietary adequacy and protection of health against noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). It measures the consumption of 29 food groups that were selected based on their relationship to nutrition and health, sustainability, and food-based dietary guidelines, and in alignment with United Nations indicators and recommendations.
The findings include:
- Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) varies widely across countries and regions.
- In most countries, less than half of people are consuming diets that contain all five recommended food groups.
- In countries where people are consuming more healthy foods, they are often consuming more unhealthy foods as well.
Read/Listen to additional analyses on food.
Ukraine War Threatens World's Food Supply: “Gallup data offer insight into the populations most likely to suffer from a prolonged disruption: people in countries reliant on wheat from Ukraine or Russia, where large segments of their populations were also struggling to afford food before the war broke out.”
The Power of Cooking and Its Impact on Us (Gallup Podcast): What have we learned from a global study of cooking across the world? What do people gain from cooking? Rimpei Iwata, CEO of Cookpad, joins the podcast to discuss the power of cooking a meal.
Food Shame at Work: An Oft-Overlooked Employee Experience (Cultural Competence podcast): Sharing meals can be a way of bringing colleagues together. But food can also be a source of judgment, shame and division in a workplace. Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson joins the podcast to discuss how employers and employees can be more mindful about cultural and class differences in approaches to food, eating, costs, waste and more.
Why Meat Consumption Faces Much Greater Scrutiny (Gallup Podcast): About one in four Americans report having cut back on meat in their diet. What ramifications does this have for the U.S. agriculture industry? And are plant-based meats merely a fad, or are they here to stay? Julia Moskin, a veteran food reporter at The New York Times, and Laura Reiley, a reporter covering the business of food at The Washington Post, join the podcast to help us digest Gallup's findings.
More from the Gallup Vault:
- 1939: Thanksgiving Sparked Partisan Storm
- 1942: America's Sweet Tooth
- 1948: Americans Favored Margarine Tax Repeal
- 1949: Easing Labor-Business Tensions Over Lunch
Keep these important resources on hand.
- Historical trends on nutrition and food: This page contains U.S. trends on nutrition and food, dating as far back as 1943.
- Historical trends on alcohol and drinking: This page contains U.S. trends on alcohol dating as far back as 1939. The percentage of Americans who drink alcohol, their favorite alcoholic beverage and more can be found here.
- Gallup content archives on food: Access Gallup content on food dating back to 2013, including all articles, Q&As, podcast interviews and more.
