Good Food Nation Survey 2026

The brief:

Since 1989, Good Food (formerly BBC Good Food) has been providing recipes, meal plans and general nutritional advice to the nation. With outlets including a printed magazine, website and mobile app, the brand reaches 50 million users per year.

Good Food has conducted an annual ‘Good Food Nation’ survey since 2014. Its main aims are to understand how the UK eats, including how we shop, how we cook, and what’s holding us back from eating healthier meals. In 2026, Good Food’s publisher Immediate Media approached Katie Lingo to write up the findings from the survey.

The method:

The aims of the 2026 survey were to discover what inspires us in the kitchen, as well as barriers to cooking and our overall attitudes to meal planning. By questioning UK adults about how they shop, what inspires their recipes and how cooking makes them feel, Good Food could strengthen its future content and inform other brands.

We started by providing a proposed chapter outline for the survey. In turn, there would be potential headlines for PR distribution based on the findings. For example, one stand-out statistic was that 81% of respondents had changed their cooking due to the cost of living.

Good Food provided us with access to its YouGov survey platform, as well as a spreadsheet copy of the survey results. The next step was to sift through the data and extract broader conclusions, for example, recipe inspiration across different age groups or meal planning obstacles for families.

Following a round of edits from Good Food’s editorial team, the survey results were transformed into a 5,000-word report. There was also a separate report on Christmas cooking, with findings to be released in late 2026.

The results:

In addition to data visualisation and report writing, we also presented the findings at the Good Food Nation event in June 2026. Taking place at London’s Soho Hotel, the event featured a keynote presentation from Katie, as well as separate talks from Dr Rupy of the Doctor’s Kitchen and a panel featuring Good Food managing editor Lulu Grimes.

The event was a resounding success and the report picked up coverage from publications such as InPublishing, the Belfast Telegraph and The Independent. The findings also featured in Immediate Media’s ‘Christmas in July’ event attended by guests including Caroline Frost of the Radio Times.

Feedback from the Immediate Media team included:

“A pleasure working with you. You smashed it! Great to see all the hard work come together.” – Keira Spillane, Senior Events Executive.

“Great presentation and great paper. Thank you for the support.” – Simon Carrington, Commercial Director, Food Group.

“You did a fantastic job bringing the findings to life and the paper is full of brilliant insights.” – Dan Elton-Allisett, Brand Lead at Good Food.

You can read the full report here or watch the highlights video below. This is just one example of our whitepaper writing and presenting services. Get in touch if you’d like one or both.