What makes a good meal? Little divides the continent more than this question

Such is Europe’s love affair with food that when European prime ministers and presidents come to make their big decisions at EU summits in Brussels, there is almost always a plate of something sumptuous in front of them.

But should there be any doubt about the scale of the challenge facing the EU’s in-house chefs, a YouGov-Cambridge survey of attitudes in eight major European countries has confirmed that little divides the continent more than the question: what makes a good meal?

Q&A What is the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project? Show Hide The project is a new annual survey of global attitudes in 23 of the world's biggest countries, covering almost 5 billion people.

The 2019 survey canvassed 25,325 people online across much of Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia in February and March.

Questions about populist attitudes and convictions were inserted in order to derive a "populist cohort", and discover what this group of people think about major world issues from immigration to vaccination, social media and globalisation. The full methodology can be found here.

The short answer is: if in doubt, go Italian. It is universally beloved. But in a juicy revelation sure to add spice to Franco-Italian relations, while 73% of French people profess to liking Italian food, only 23% of Italians like to eat French cuisine.

A similar cultural mismatch can be found in British and Spanish tastes. The British are partial to tapas, as the proliferation of outlets in the UK will attest. In the survey, 48% of British people say they like Spanish food. But the Spaniards are not so keen on fish and chips, with just 19% professing an appreciation of the joys of battered cod.

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In general, when it comes to food, people appear happiest with their own national nosh (a notable exception: Brits narrowly favour Italian over their own seaside staple, with or without mushy peas).

It has been previously calculated that the people of France spend more time than anyone else eating meals with others: two hours and 22 minutes a day on average. And when they do, a full 86% like their national cooking.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t see beyond the jus on a magret de canard. Half of respondents (51%) say they enjoy Chinese cuisine and 40% like food from Morocco, a former French colony.

The UK might be leaving the EU, but 80% say they like Italian food, nearly half (46%) approve of the Greek style and 41% like French.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Italian cheeses on sale at Borough Market in London. Photograph: Alamy

Indian food curries favour with 69% of Britons and 75% say they like Chinese food. Almost half (46%) like Thai while about 30% enjoy Caribbean, Cajun and Turkish food.

But while most Europeans are happy eating their own food, they are distinctly less excited about their own capital cities.



Familiarity, it seems, breeds contempt. Asked to choose which city they thought of as the single most exciting to visit, 3% of Italians chose Rome, the same proportion of Britons chose London, while just 4% of French people opted for Paris.

These nationalities would much prefer a bite of the Big Apple, with 28% of Italians, 23% of Britons and 20% of French respondents opting for New York, the clear winner in almost every European nation surveyed.

Tokyo has also captured the imagination of many Europeans; it was the second choice of Italian, Spanish, Danish and British respondents and the first choice for Swedes, 17% of whom named it as their preferred destination.

The YouGov survey also asked people what they thought about goods made in various countries. While more than half of those asked in the British sample (56%) say they think more positively about a product “made in Britain”, just 30% of the French sample felt the same.

“Made in Germany” elicited the most positive response from survey samples; but “made in China” found little approval, with fewer than 10% of respondents saying they thought more positively about a product if it had come from the world’s biggest economy.

When it comes to cultural output, the US is still out in front. Europeans, it seems, cannot get enough of American television series and box sets. More than 70% of Spaniards and Swedes watch US shows at least once a week. More than half do so in every other European country in the sample other than France, where it was 37%.

Vive l’exception culturelle!