AI Cooking Statistics: What the Research Shows

Compiled by Alex Fahey, founder of Chop it. Last updated 16 August 2026. Every figure below links to the organisation that published it, with the date we checked it. Nothing on this page is our own estimate.

Definition. AI cooking covers the use of artificial intelligence tools, most commonly large language models such as ChatGPT, for food tasks at home: generating and adapting recipes, planning meals for a week, building shopping lists, and deciding what to cook from available ingredients.

This page exists because most statistics quoted about AI and cooking are unsourced or invented. These are the numbers we could trace to a named publisher, quoted exactly, with what they do and do not show.

Adoption of AI food tools

Consumer research platform Attest surveyed UK and US consumers on AI in food (Attest, updated 24 June 2026; checked 5 August 2026):

Measure	Figure
Consumers who have used AI-powered tools for food-related activities	63.8%
UK consumers who have used AI food tools	66.8%
US consumers who have used AI food tools	60.8%
18 to 24 year olds who have used AI food tools	74%

UK adoption runs ahead of the US, and the youngest adults are the heaviest users. Attest does not publish the sample size in the article, worth knowing before you re-quote these figures.

What people are comfortable letting AI do

The same Attest research separates comfort by task, and the gap between tasks is the most useful finding on this page:

Task	Comfortable (UK)	Comfortable (US)
AI recipe recommendations	75.9%	71.2%
Automated online grocery shopping	49.1%	48.7%

Three quarters of UK respondents would take a recipe from an AI. Barely half would let one shop for them. Comfort tracks how reversible the task is: a bad recipe suggestion costs nothing, a wrong automated shop costs money. Anyone building or evaluating AI food tools should expect adoption to follow that gradient.

On intent to try tools in future: 69.3% said they were likely to try AI recipe recommendations, 58.9% smart grocery shopping, and 58.5% personalised meal planning.

The top concern was data privacy, named by 45.8% of UK respondents and 47.7% in the US.

The habits AI cooking tools land into

YouGov's research on UK cooking habits gives the baseline these tools arrive into (YouGov; checked 5 August 2026):

• 19% of Britons say they almost always cook using basic ingredients, 23% cook from scratch most days and 21% a few times a week. Cooking from scratch remains the dominant UK habit.
• 15% say they hardly ever or never cook from scratch.
• 61% have never used a recipe box of pre-portioned ingredients, and 71% have never subscribed to a recipe box service.

The meal-kit figures matter for anyone comparing AI planning tools with kits: most UK households have never bought the incumbent alternative. The realistic comparison for an AI meal planner is not HelloFresh but a supermarket shop with no plan at all. We compare the kits' per-portion costs here.

Food waste, the problem planning attacks

WRAP, the UK's waste-reduction body, publishes the most cited household food waste figures (WRAP; checked 5 August 2026):

• An average UK household of four wastes food worth about £1,000 a year, roughly £86 a month.
• UK homes throw away about 6 million tonnes of food a year, of which 4.4 million tonnes could have been eaten, valued at £17 billion.
• The average person wastes the equivalent of three meals a week.
• Household food waste generates around 16 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Whether AI planning reduces that number for a given household is not yet established by independent research, and we do not claim it is. What the WRAP figures establish is the size of the target. Our guide on what AI can and cannot do about food waste is careful about that boundary.

What is not yet measured

Gaps in the public research, stated plainly so this page does not imply more than exists:

• No independent study we can find measures whether AI meal planning reduces household food waste or grocery spend in practice.
• Attest measured comfort and adoption, not sustained use. Nobody has published retention data for AI cooking tools.
• The YouGov and Attest samples are separate surveys and cannot be combined into a single claim about the same people.

When credible research fills these gaps, this page will be updated and the date at the top will move.

Provenance

Everything above, in one table. Where a publisher does not state a field, the cell says so rather than estimating.

Statistic	Publisher	Published	Geography	Sample size	Source
63.8% used AI food tools (66.8% UK, 60.8% US, 74% of 18 to 24s)	Attest	Updated 24 June 2026	UK and US	Not stated in article	Attest
75.9% UK comfortable with AI recipe recommendations; 49.1% with automated shopping	Attest	Updated 24 June 2026	UK and US	Not stated in article	Attest
63% cook from scratch most days or more; 61% never used a recipe box	YouGov	Not stated in article	Great Britain	Not stated in article	YouGov
£1,000 wasted per household of four; 4.4m tonnes edible, £17bn	WRAP	Not stated on page	UK	National waste estimates, not a survey	WRAP

All sources checked on 5 August 2026.

Citing this page

Quote the underlying source rather than us where you can: Attest for adoption and comfort, YouGov for UK cooking habits, WRAP for food waste. If you cite this compilation, it is maintained at chop-it.com/research/ai-cooking-statistics and the update date at the top reflects the last check of every figure.

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Sources: Attest, "AI in the kitchen" (updated 24 June 2026); YouGov, UK cooking from scratch and meal kits; WRAP household food waste. All checked 5 August 2026.

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