• India top’s the chart for hours per week people spend cooking
• Indonesians have a passion for food
• And South Koreans rarely cook at home

 

These and other interesting findings are contained in a recent survey of more than 27,000 people aged 15 or older across 22 countries. The researchers asked about how many hours per week they spend cooking – and how knowledgeable, experienced and passionate they are about food and cooking. The result show Asian’s love food. Well we already knew that.

Hours spent cooking per week

Internationally, people who cook say that they spend, on average, just under six and a half hours a week doing this (not counting those who don’t cook at all). And the classic stereotype holds true, with women saying just over seven and a half hours per week cooking, compared to men’s five hours a week.

This overall figure is heavily led by the top five most active countries. In India and Ukraine, people spend just over 13 hours a week cooking, falling to nine and a half hours for South Africa. Indonesia comes next with more than eight hours, followed by Italy, just topping seven hours. The countries where people say they spend the least amount of time cooking each week are Brazil (slightly more than five hours), Turkey (slightly less than five hours) and South Korea, which is trailing well behind at less than four hours, possibly due to the popularity of its inexpensive street food carts.

Of almost more interest for businesses selling into the cooking market is the frequency with which people cook purely for fun, rather than necessity. Overall, just under a third of people (30 percent of both men and women) say they cook for fun at least once a week – and a further quarter claim to do this every day or most days (33 percent of women and 21 percent of men).

The survey was commissioned by appliance maker GfK. Udo Jansen, GfK’s Global Director for tracking sales of small domestic appliances, comments: “This study delivers valuable insight for businesses offering food and cooking products or services, especially when combined with our sales trends for electric kitchen appliances worldwide. For example, we are seeing growing demand for electric food preparation appliances in India, Indonesia and Italy. Our combination of attitudinal insight and actual sales trends is unbeatable in revealing which markets and consumer segments present the greatest commercial opportunities for our clients.”

Knowledge and experience of cooking

Overall, 29 percent of people claim to have great knowledge and experience about food and cooking – but this is again led by women who stand at a third (34 percent), compared to just a quarter (25 percent) of men.

Breaking this down into individual countries, South Africa and India top the list, with around half of people (50 and 48 percent respectively) agreeing, or agreeing strongly, that this applies to them. Also in the top five are Turkey and Ukraine at 40 percent each and Indonesia at 38 percent.

At the bottom end of the scale, we see Spain, France, Russia and Australia – with just one in five (20 percent) believing they have great knowledge and experience with food and cooking. These are followed by Belgium at 19 percent and South Korea trailing well behind at only 13 percent.

Passion for cooking

Looking at genders, an average 37 percent of women and 27 percent of men across all 22 countries agree that they are really passionate about food and cooking.

Interestingly, when we look at individual countries, the findings show that knowledge and experience of food and cooking does not always relate to passion for these things. Turkey, which was 3 rd for claiming knowledge and experience, falls to 7 th place (equal with USA) when asked about passion for cooking, and Ukraine (4 th for knowledge) slips to 11 th place. Instead, we see Italy and Mexico (7 th and 8 th respectively for knowledge) appear in the top five countries claiming cooking passion. In fact, Italy leads all other countries in this area, with 43 percent agreeing or agreeing strongly that they are really passionate about food and cooking. They are very closely followed by South Africa (42 percent), Indonesia and Mexico (40 percent) and India (39 percent).

By comparison, the lowest ranking countries – Poland, Sweden, Belgium and Russia – all have only about one in five feeling passionate about cooking, while the bottom place of all is again claimed by South Korea, at just 13 percent.