F&Y2 Wave 5-6 NI: 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 vision and inform policy decisions by measuring self-reported consumers’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviours related to food safety and other food issues in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland on a regular basis ^{(footnote 2)}.

Food and You 2

Ipsos were commissioned by the FSA to develop and run a biannual survey, ‘Food and You 2’, carried out primarily online with the option of participating via a postal questionnaire. More information about the history and methodology can be found in Annex A. 

Food and You 2: Wave 5 and Wave 6

Fieldwork for Food and You 2: Wave 5  was conducted between 26th April and 24th July 2022. A total of 6,770 adults from 4,727 households across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland completed the survey. A total of 1,875 adults in Northern Ireland completed the survey.

Fieldwork for Food and You 2: Wave 6 was conducted between 12th October 2022 and 10th January 2023. A total of 5,991 adults from 4,271 households across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland completed the survey. A total of 1,644 adults in Northern Ireland completed the survey.

Food and You 2: Wave 5 and 6 data were collected during a period of political and economic change and uncertainty. This context is likely to have had an impact on the level of food security, concerns and food-related behaviours reported in Food and You 2.

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

Findings presented in this report refer to data collected in Northern Ireland unless otherwise specified. Not all questions asked in the surveys are included in the report. The full results are available in the accompanying Food and You 2: Wave 5 data tables and underlying data set and Food and You 2: Wave 6 data tables and underlying data set. 

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 fewer than 10 percentage points, when the finding is notable or judged to be of interest. These differences are indicated with a double asterisk (**).

In some cases, it was not possible to include the data of all sub-groups, however these data are available in the Food and You 2: Wave 5 and Food and You 2: Wave 6 data 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).
• whether data were collected from Wave 5 or Wave 6.
• please note: indicates important points to consider when interpreting the results.