24 June 2026
The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)’s Healthier Lives Coalition today released a report in collaboration with Bain & Company, revealing that home cooking remains the ideal for many consumers around the world. However, busy lifestyles are increasing reliance on time saving food solutions whose perceived healthiness and quality vary significantly. At the same time, transformative forces such as GLP-1s and AI dietary co-pilots – are increasingly shaping how consumers prepare, eat and make decisions about food and health.
Titled State of food habits: A baseline of how consumers eat today, the report establishes a baseline understanding of how consumers source meals today across Europe and the United States. Drawing on multiple consumer research programmes, it explores the trade offs consumers need to strike between health, convenience, cost and quality when making food choices.
The findings show that ~75% of all meals are consumed at home (versus out of home), with around half of at-home meals being cooked from scratch. Consumers consistently associate scratch cooking with healthier eating, better quality, lower costs and giving them greater control over ingredients. However, while consumers aspire to cook more at home and from scratch, approximately 50% say they don’t have time to do so.
Rising costs are prompting consumers to reduce restaurant spending and seek better value in the grocery store. One third of consumers say they are pulling back on restaurant spending, and half of shoppers view private labels as having quality and taste as good as or better than national brands, on top of winning on affordability. The shift towards eating at home provides an important opportunity for the industry to support healthier eating habits through product innovation, convenient meal solutions (such as home cooking short cuts) and digital tools that help consumers navigate food choices more effectively.
While home cooking remains the cornerstone of healthy eating for many consumers, the pressures of everyday life mean convenience is key. One in three at-home meals involves no cooking at all, relying instead on ready meals or food delivery. Despite their prevalence (20% of at-home meals) one-third of consumers would like to reduce ready meal consumption, due to health concerns (nutrition & additives). At the same time, restaurant delivery has emerged as a meaningful alternative to home cooking, accounting for one in ten at-home meals.
Solo eating further reinforces demand for healthy and convenient solutions. Around 40% of at-home meals are eaten alone, with consumers prioritising options that are both quick and nutritious.
Technology continues to shape eating habits, with around half of consumers already using digital tools, including AI-powered solutions, to support food planning, preparation shopping and nutrition and dietary guidance. Of consumers who use AI tools, 40% use them to evaluate nutritional information and dietary guidance. The rise of AI and digital tools is reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate food products, reducing the influence of traditional brand relationships and elevating the importance of algorithm-driven visibility, trusted recommendations, and credible validation.
Oonagh Turnbull, Head of Health and Sustainable Diet Campaigns, Strategy and Campaigns, Group Communications and Coalition Chairperson, Tesco, said:
“This report provides valuable insight into the realities of how people make food choices today. While consumers continue to aspire to cook and eat healthily, they are often balancing competing demands on their time, budgets and lifestyles. Understanding these changing habits is essential if we are to develop products, services and retail environments that genuinely help make healthier choices easier and more accessible for everyone.”
Frans Muller, President and CEO of Ahold Delhaize, said:
“Consumers clearly aspire to cook more meals at home and from scratch, recognising the benefits for health, quality and value. This research highlights the opportunity for our industry to better support those ambitions by offering nutritious, convenient and affordable solutions that help people make healthier choices every day.”
Brian McNamara, CEO of Haleon, said:
“As consumers increasingly turn to digital tools and AI-powered solutions for guidance on food, nutrition and wellbeing, our industry has an opportunity to deliver trusted, evidence-based information that supports healthier decision-making. These insights help us better understand how technology can empower people to make choices that improve their health every day.”
Antoine de Saint-Affrique, CEO of Danone said:
“AI is accelerating a new frontier of science — from microbiome research to precision nutrition — fundamentally transforming how we design food for health. At Danone, we harness this convergence of advanced biology, data, and responsible AI, with the ambition to deliver tangible health impact at scale.”
Sharon Bligh, Director of Health & Sustainability at The Consumer Goods Forum, said:
“These findings highlight a clear gap between consumers’ aspirations and the realities of everyday life. As food choices become increasingly influenced by convenience, technology and changing lifestyles, there is an important opportunity for the industry to help make healthier choices easier, more accessible and more achievable.”
Ruth Lewis, a food consumption & distribution expert at Bain & Company, said:
“We are entering a new era of food decision-making, where consumers have unprecedented visibility into what they eat and access to tools that help them navigate complex choices. At the same time, the growing adoption of GLP-1s has the potential to reshape demand patterns across food categories. As the market matures, lower costs, improved tolerability and next-generation treatments could drive more mainstream adoption and sustained usage of GLP-1s, materially altering category economics and spending patterns over time.”
GLP-1 medications are already reshaping consumer food choices and eating habits, with their impact expected to accelerate in the years ahead. By 2030, an estimated one in three Americans, one in four Brazilians, and one in eight Britons are projected to have used a GLP-1 medication. While this trend presents challenges for the consumer goods industry, it also creates new opportunities. Active GLP-1 users already spend approximately 3–4% less on groceries overall, with centre aisle categories experiencing the greatest impact, and around 5% less on fast food, with specific banner experiencing a spend reduction of up to 8-9%. At the same time, GLP-1 users report that they are eating a more healthy diet overall, increasing their purchases of vitamins, meal replacement products, fruit & vegetables, and fish & poultry. Over the longer term, GLP-1s could fundamentally reshape the economics and growth opportunities within the food industry. As treatment costs decline, side effects are reduced, and next-generation innovations such as oral formulations and expanded indications come to market, adoption is expected to move further into the mainstream and reach a significantly broader consumer base.
As the first report in a multi-year research ambition, this report establishes a benchmark for understanding how consumer eating habits are evolving and where the industry can play a greater role in supporting healthier lives. For consumer goods companies, this research provides a perspective on how consumer demands are evolving – helping to ensure the design of products and services that genuinely meet consumer needs and helps them make healthier choices..
The Coalition will use these insights to inform its ongoing initiatives, supporting members to better align products, retail environments and interventions with the realities of how consumers make food choices today.
This topic will be further discussed at the CGF’s Global Summit. Sessions include ‘The Future of Health’, ‘Shaping the Future of Health and Nutrition through AI’ and ‘Fact, Fiction or Future? How GLP-1 is Rewriting the Global Food System’.
The full report can be found here
