F&Y2 Wave 10: Introduction

The Food Standards Agency: role, remit, and responsibilities 

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is a non-ministerial government department working to protect public health and consumers’ wider interests in relation to food in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  ^{(footnote 1)} The FSA’s overarching mission is ‘food you can trust’. The FSA’s vision as set out in the 2022-2027 strategy is a food system in which:

• food is safe
• food is what it says it is
• food is healthier and more sustainable

Food and You 2 is designed to monitor the FSA’s progress against this mission and to inform policy decisions by measuring on a regular basis consumers’ self-reported knowledge, attitudes and behaviours related to food safety and other food issues in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. 

Food and You 2: Wave 10

Food and You 2: Wave 10 data were collected between 9 October 2024 and 7 February 2025. A total of 5,690 adults (aged 16 years and over) from 3,965 households across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland completed the survey (an overall response rate of 25.6%).

Food and You 2 is a modular survey, with ‘core’ modules included in every wave, ‘rotated’ modules repeated annually or biennially, and one-off modules addressing current issues of interest. The modules presented in this report include: ‘Food you can trust’ (core), ‘Food security’ (core), ‘Eating at home (core)’, ‘Food hypersensitivities’ (rotated), ‘Eating out and takeaways (core)’. 

Scotland was included in the questionnaire for Wave 10, funded by Food Standards Scotland (FSS). Questions asked to Scottish participants mirrored those asked in England and Wales with alternative wording as appropriate for questions referring to country specific government bodies and food hygiene schemes. All content in this report is applicable to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Findings for Scotland are reported separately by FSS. ^{(footnote 2)}

This report presents key findings from the Food and You 2: Wave 10 survey. Not all questions asked in the Wave 10 survey are included in the report. The full results are available in the accompanying data set and tables.

Context

Wave 10 of Food and You 2 took place between October 2024 and February 2025 during the first six months of a new government following the UK general election held in July 2024. During this time there has been a continued period of political and economic change, including a new budget which was announced in October 2024 at the start of Wave 10 fieldwork. In relation to broader issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, food price inflation remained high during this period. It should also be noted that external sources have reported lower levels of trust in government in recent years. ^{(footnote 3)} Responses gathered during fieldwork for Wave 10 may have been impacted by some, or all, of these events and circumstances. 

Interpreting the findings 

To highlight the key differences between socio-demographic and other sub-groups, variations in responses are typically reported only where the absolute difference is 10 percentage points or larger and is statistically significant at the 5% level (p<0.05). However, some differences between socio-demographic and other sub-groups are included where the difference is less than 10 percentage points, when the finding is notable or judged to be of interest. These differences are indicated with a double asterisk (**). A single asterisk indicates that the value is not reported as the base size is below 100 and therefore may not be representative (*).

In some cases, it was not possible to include the data of all sub-groups, however such analyses are available in the full data set and tables. Key information is provided for each reported question in the footnotes, including:   

• question wording (question) and response options (response)
• number of respondents presented with each question and description of the respondents who answered the question (Base= N)