How do Australians Cook (and Eat!)? We find out

Here at HelloFresh HQ, we love to know what makes Australians tick, heck, we even want to know what makes you tock. It all helps us better understand how we can create healthy, tasty, simple dinnertime meals. We just want to be perfect for you! I’m not crying, you’re crying!

So what else was there to do but to really get stuck into the matter? We commissioned a survey into Australian weeknight cooking behaviours and decision-making processes to get a handle on how Australians are navigating the stresses of deciding what to cook for dinner and ensuring weeknight dinners are healthy and enjoyable for the entire household. We wanted to find out just how Australians cook and eat at dinnertime. Sound like a difficult task? As you’ll see below, that’s because it is!

What we found out was fascinating

There’s a lot to learn when you turn your eyes to a week in the life of cooks in Australia. For starters, it turns out Australians still value preparing homemade meals during the week (this makes us unspeakably happy). Many Australians still have a desire to cook homemade meals on weeknights, with around five meals cooked at home per week, three of which with fresh ingredients. Increasingly busy schedules aside, the desire to cook lies in wanting to keep spending to a minimum and a belief home cooked tastes better.

Discovering Dinner Decision Fatigue

Despite this value placed on home cooked meals, it appears the greatest stress that falls on the home chef is knowing what to cook. The reasoning being a combination of option paralysis, busy schedules and the need to satisfy different tastes or preferences when cooking.

Australians are also struggling with the high expectations food media can create for home cooked meals. Additionally, they are also reluctant to try new recipes they may have seen due to ingredients being expensive and unlikely to be used outside of a particular recipe. Considering differing skill levels in cooking, many Australians also admitted to making mistakes when cooking recipes.

And then there’s all the time involved. The average Australian spends over 6 days a year going grocery shopping. Imagine having 6 days of extra leisure time a year!

Above all, there’s a disconnect between Australians’ desire to cook wholesome, exciting and tasty weeknight meals and the reality of the average household’s weekly dinners. This is likely the result of stress experienced by many home cooks, paired with guilt in not cooking enough healthy meals and too often cooking the same meals over and over. Household disagreements over what to cook for dinner are quite common and many household desire to eat as a group more often than occurs.

So what does it all mean?

It seems Australians desire a more adventurous life in the kitchen with plenty of variety at dinnertime during the week, and an emphasis on health and nutrition too. In fact, as you’ve seen, nearly nine out of 10 Australians (87%) express this desire. We Aussies want to cook and eat a healthy variety of meals, but we often find it’s pretty hard to make that happen.

Good thing HelloFresh is here to take out all of that stress in between initial inspiration and sitting down to eat dinner. With all the hassle of shopping gone and the variety and joy of cooking preserved, we’ll deliver inspiration to your door every week.