I love cooking, eating, taking photos of food, and sharing meals with interesting people. Food is something that I'm pretty passionate about and so I was excited to dig into the survey results that Knorr sent me from their survey of more than 2,000 Americans. The survey included questions about food preferences, cooking styles, spending habits and more. As someone who loves food I was a bit surprised by some of the findings but maybe I shouldn't be. Here's what they found ...
This food and cooking survey was put together by OnePoll on behalf of the folks at Knorr, a company that has been focused on helping make cooking easier for more than 175 years. They started with dried soups in Germany and then introduced the Knorr Bouillon cube in 1912. Today they make a ton of great products that help make quick meals and snacks such as seasoning packs to add to rice, one skillet meals, sauces, and recipe mixes. Personally I love to use their Caldo de Pollo chicken bouillon with my Ramen noodles since I like to make a brothier soup and add other stuff to it like egg, carrots etc. But mostly I just like a nice hot broth and adding extra water just dilutes the included ramen spice packet.
While some people may look at products like this as a cheat ... I can't imagine cooking a soup from scratch or even a curry without having pre-made stock or bouillon to kick start it.
Some Interesting Results For the Cooking in America Survey
The average American spends just 42 minutes preparing and cooking their meals each day and only eat eight home-cooked meals per week!
Most have tried Italian, Chinese, and Mexican foods but 85% say they have never tried Moroccan.
While most people have cooked with grains, despite whole-grain cooking being on trend less than half of those who responded have never tried barley, quinoa, or rye. Not surprisingly 59% weren't even sure how to properly pronounce quinoa. Just incase you are in that group - it's pronounced keen-wa and frankly I'm not a fan of it myself though I love barley soup and rye bread!
Following this less than adventurous trend was the surprising result that 54% of people have never tried sushi and 58% have never tasted classic spaghetti Bolognese (here's a Bolognese recipe if you aren't sure if you have tried it either).
If you are curious about digging deeper into these stats and others, make sure to check out the full survey on Knorr's website.
What Do I Think?
Frankly, I'm surprised at parts and optimistic at others. For instance, while I'm surprised that things I take as common such as barley, sushi, and various ethnic foods aren't more popular ... our culture simply doesn't celebrate food the way I do. While I eat most of my meals on the go, a great meal is an event and I eagerly anticipate opportunities to try something new.
In many ways I think this was because of how I was raised. My parents exposed me to various types of food at a very young age and because of this, as an adult I enjoy foods as "normal" that many others treat as being exotic.
However, I absolutely find myself paralleling the trend of people spending very small amounts of time preparing food and eating at home. Ironically, most of my time spent doing this is while preparing a recipe for the site - rather than for the sheer enjoyment of cooking. This is a sad testiment to where modern life has taken us. When I first met Heather I know that I won points by preparing special dinners to show how much I loved her.
My love hasn't changed but my time has and that's too bad.
We all need to focus on recovering some of that fun and excitement of cooking. I can't wait to share more recipes coming up soon!
