Cooking habits vary from the time people spend preparing meals to how they cool leftovers, thaw meat, and check doneness. The latest available figures show measurable differences between weekdays and weekends, home and away-from-home spending, reported behavior and observed kitchen practice, and U.S. and UK-based surveys.
Contents
- Time spent preparing food
- Home cooking and food spending
- Scratch cooking and cost-saving habits
- Handwashing and kitchen hygiene
- Doneness, reheating, and cross-contamination
- Leftovers, refrigeration, and thawing
- Thermometers and cooking methods
Time spent preparing food
The American Time Use Survey—2025 Results found that U.S. people age 15 and over spent an average of 0.71 hours per day on food preparation and cleanup in 2025. That is the population-wide average, including days when someone did not report the activity. On an average day, 65.2% engaged in food preparation or cleanup. Among those who did, the average was 1.09 hours on an engaged day.
The daily average was higher for women than men. Women spent 0.91 hours per day on food preparation and cleanup, compared with 0.51 hours for men. The participation rates were 72.2% for women and 57.9% for men. Looking only at people who engaged in the activity, men spent 0.88 hours on those days and women spent 1.26 hours.
Weekends and holidays also showed a modest difference. U.S. people spent 0.70 hours per weekday on food preparation and cleanup, compared with 0.74 hours per weekend or holiday day. The average engaged-day duration was 1.06 hours on weekdays and 1.18 hours on weekend or holiday days. These are 2025 annual averages, not estimates of the length of a particular meal-preparation session.
Home cooking and food spending
The USDA Economic Research Service reported that U.S. consumers, businesses, and government entities spent $2.57 trillion on food in 2023. Per-person food spending was $7,672. Of that total, per-person spending on food prepared at home rose 1.8%, from $3,130 in 2022 to $3,187 in 2023.
Spending away from home grew faster: per-person spending rose 12.0%, from $4,004 in 2022 to $4,485 in 2023. Food away from home represented 58.5% of nominal U.S. food spending in 2023, while food at home represented 41.5%.
| U.S. food-spending measure | 2022 | 2023 | Change or 2023 share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food prepared at home per person | $3,130 | $3,187 | +1.8% |
| Food away from home per person | $4,004 | $4,485 | +12.0% |
| Disposable income spent on food at home | 5.6% | 5.3% | 2023 share |
| Disposable income spent away from home | 5.6% | 5.9% | 2023 share |
Overall, U.S. consumers spent 11.2% of disposable personal income on food in 2023. The share spent on food at home fell from 5.6% in 2022 to 5.3% in 2023, while the share spent away from home rose from 5.6% to 5.9%.
Price changes help explain why spending totals do not directly measure cooking frequency. Food-at-home prices rose an average of 5.1% in the United States in 2023, while nominal food-at-home spending rose 2.4% year over year. The USDA food-at-home measure covers food intended for home preparation; it is not a direct count of meals cooked at home.
Scratch cooking and cost-saving habits
The Food and You 2 and Consumer Insights Tracker figures in Consumers’ Food Safety Practices in the Home: Trends and Insights From 2020 to 2025 describe adults in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Across Waves 2–4, 59%–62% reported cooking food from scratch every day or most days. Later responses connected scratch cooking with household finances: 25% reported cooking from scratch more for financial reasons in Wave 6, rising to 27% in Wave 9.
The Consumer Insights Tracker found that 34%–41% reported cooking or preparing food from scratch instead of buying it ready-made to save money during August 2023–March 2025. This is a reported cost-saving behavior, not a calculation of how much money scratch cooking saved.
Batch cooking and leftovers moved unevenly across the waves. The share reporting that they prepared food to keep as leftovers or cooked in batches more for financial reasons rose from 29% in Wave 6 to 33% in Wave 7, then fell to 26% in Wave 9. The share keeping leftovers longer before eating them for financial reasons rose from 13% in Wave 6 to 20% in Wave 7, then fell to 10% in Wave 9.
Other reported money-saving changes included using cheaper cooking methods instead of an oven. That share was 54% in July 2023 and 54% in March 2025, with 53%–58% across the tracking waves. Smaller shares reported changing cooking time or temperature for financial reasons: 2% in Wave 6, 4% in Wave 7, and 2% in Wave 9.
Some cost-saving practices can introduce food-safety questions. The share reporting that they ate food past its use-by date for financial reasons was 12% in Wave 6, 21% in Wave 7, and 11% in Wave 9. These FSA figures are self-reported unless a result is specifically identified as Kitchen Life 2 observation data.
Handwashing and kitchen hygiene
Reported handwashing changed across the measurement periods. The share saying they always washed hands with soap and warm water at home fell from 27% in April 2020 to 16% in January 2022. The share reporting handwashing for at least 20 seconds fell from 63% in July 2020 to 55% in January 2022.
Before preparing or cooking food, 77% reported always washing their hands in Wave 1, compared with 68% in Wave 8, 74% in Wave 9, and 72% in Wave 10. Before eating, the corresponding figures were 53%, 42%, 49%, and 46%.
Raw animal foods produced higher reported compliance. The share saying they always washed hands immediately after handling raw meat, poultry, or fish was 88% in Wave 1 and 89% in Wave 10. Among respondents with pets, the share saying they always washed hands after contact with animals fell from 40% in October 2020 to 32% in January 2022.
The FDA’s Food Safety and Nutrition Survey—2019 Survey provides a separate U.S. reference point. In October–November 2019, 76% reported washing hands with soap after touching raw meat, compared with 68% before preparing food. Only 39% reported washing hands with soap after cracking raw eggs. The Food and You 2 waves and the FDA survey use different populations, dates, and question designs, so their percentages should not be treated as a single time series.
Doneness, reheating, and cross-contamination
In the FSA series, the share reporting that they always cooked food until steaming hot and all the way through rose from 76% in Wave 1 to 79% in Wave 10. At the same time, the share saying they never ate chicken or turkey when it was pink or had pink or red juices fell from 94% to 87%.
Reported attitudes differed by food. The share saying they never ate sausages when pink was 96% in Wave 1, 93% in Wave 5, and 94% in Wave 9. For beef burgers, the share saying they never ate them when pink was 70% in Waves 1 and 5, then 66% in Wave 9.
Reheating behavior was relatively stable. The share saying they would reheat food only once was 83% in Wave 1 and 81% in Wave 10, with 79%–83% across the waves.
Reported separation of preparation equipment was close to one-half: 53% reported using a different chopping board for raw meat and other foods in Wave 5, compared with 54% in Wave 9. Kitchen Life 2 observation data show why self-reports and observed practice should be kept distinct. Of 140 observed meal occasions involving a chopping board for meat, fish, or poultry, the board was washed with detergent during the meal on 20% of occasions. On a further 20%, it was washed with water only.
Leftovers, refrigeration, and thawing
Across Food and You 2 Waves 1–10, 57%–63% reported that they or someone in the household checked the fridge temperature or used an alarm. The share saying a fridge should be between 0°C and 5°C was 62% in Wave 1 and 60% in Wave 10.
Kitchen Life 2 thermometer measurements provide a different perspective. Among 65 households with an installed fridge/freezer thermometer, 34 had an average fridge temperature above 5°C and 8 had an average above 8°C. The average fridge temperature across the 65 households was 5.3°C. These are observed fieldwork measurements, not self-reported expectations.
Leftover timing was reported by 41% in Wave 1 and 42% in Wave 9 for putting leftovers in the fridge or freezer within one to two hours of cooking. The share saying they would consume refrigerated leftovers within two days ranged from 62% to 70% across the tracked waves. Meanwhile, 23% in Wave 1, 31% in Wave 2, and 29% in Wave 10 said they would consume refrigerated leftovers after more than two days.
Defrosting practices also varied. The share typically leaving frozen meat or fish to defrost at room temperature was 45% in Wave 5 and 41% in Wave 9. In the FDA’s October–November 2019 U.S. survey, for frozen raw meat or chicken, 20% always thawed in the refrigerator, 34% often did so, and 32% sometimes did so. Counter or table thawing was reported as always by 5%, often by 20%, and sometimes by 37%.
The FDA also recorded microwave thawing at 1% always, 8% often, and 34% sometimes. Cooking from frozen without thawing was reported at 1% always, 5% often, and 30% sometimes. These percentages refer to the relevant FDA raw-meat or chicken subgroup.
Thermometers and cooking methods
In the FDA’s 2019 U.S. survey, 62% of respondents reported owning a food thermometer. Among owners who cooked the specified food, reported thermometer use was highest for whole chickens at 85% and beef, lamb, or pork roasts at 79%. It was lower for chicken parts at 40% and burgers at 36%, and lower again for egg dishes at 23% and frozen meals at 20%.
The denominator matters: these usage percentages include respondents who owned a thermometer and cooked the specified food, not every survey respondent. Ownership therefore does not mean that a thermometer was used for every food or every meal.
The same FDA survey found that among respondents who prepared a main household meal, 61% did so all or nearly all of the time, 34% did so some of the time, and 5% never did so. Together, these figures describe a broad range of home-cooking involvement, from frequent meal preparation to occasional or no preparation, while the more recent time-use data measure average activity time rather than cooking frequency alone.