Recipes, guides and kitchen know-how. Mostly useful, occasionally silly.
Brits Report Illness After Eating Food from Social Media Chefs
We surveyed 5,000 Brits about buying dinner from social media chefs in lockdown. 1 in 10 got ill. Here's what the law says about selling food from home, and the bugs behind it.
Report: A tenth of Brits report feeling unwell after consuming food from social media chefs
At Oliver’s Kitchen we’ve made it our mission to keep up to date with current and emerging food trends, and throughout the nationwide lockdowns we’ve seen a variety of food trends, from Gordon Ramsey’s TikTok reviews, to mass banana bread baking!
However, there is one trend we’ve been on the periphery of, and one which we thought needed a little bit of an investigation. The trend we’re talking about is Brits buying homemade food from unregistered sellers and social media chefs during lockdown - something which has become increasingly popular during the last 12 months.
So, to try and understand just why this trend has become so popular, we commissioned a survey of 5,000 British residents to find out their thoughts on it, and what experiences they’d had eating this type of takeaway - here’s what we found...
A huge slice of the pie!
Looking into our findings, we discovered that more than three quarters (79%) of Brits have ordered food from an unregistered home takeaway or social media chef during lockdown.
A tenth (9%) of the people we spoke to said they had suffered with either stomach ache or diarrhea following a purchase from a social media chef (yikes) - a lot of food poisoning from takeaway meals that never saw a hygiene inspector, and more than a third (34%) were concerned with the appearance/smell of the food and its packaging when it arrived.
The effects of lockdown
The reason we thought this survey was so important, was the sheer number of people starting at-home food businesses since the first lockdown (it was a strange time all round - pubs were pouring millions of pints down the drain), which has become a concern for the Food Standards Agency, which is struggling to monitor health and safety compliance.
The rules on selling food from home in the UK
If you’re starting a food business from home in the UK, by law you must register with their local authority, and have local authority officers complete a Food Hygiene Inspection at their residence. Food businesses must also use HACCP procedures or a HACCP-based Food Safety Management System, as approved by the Government - all processes we very much doubt most of these sellers will have undertaken.
Stopping the spread of illness
As many of you will know, these systems and protocols are in place to stop the spread of food-related illnesses - some of which can be very dangerous. To shine a light on some of them, we’ve created a list of the five most common food related illnesses, and what they entail, from mild food poisoning symptoms to the ones that need a doctor:
1) Salmonella - poultry such as chicken and turkey are especially likely to carry this bacteria. The symptoms of salmonella include diarrhoea, fever and stomach cramps, and usually start 6 hours to 6 days after infection and can last 4 to 7 days. Cooking meat right through usually kills Salmonella - a digital meat thermometer takes the guesswork out of it - however humans can catch it from vegetables, fruit and dairy that come into contact with it.
2) Norovirus - Norovirus is a group of viruses that can cause an infection of the gut in humans, and is commonly caught from other people who are carrying the virus on their hands and transmitted on objects. The virus is expelled from the body when someone goes to the toilet, which is why washing your hands before preparing food is key to stopping the spread. Symptoms include diarrhea, nausea, headache and fever.
3) Campylobacter - People can catch it by eating undercooked poultry or eating something that has come into contact with it, like a chopping board that's had raw chicken on it (here's how to clean a wooden chopping board properly). Symptoms usually last a week and include diarrhea, nausea, stomach ache and in severe cases temporary paralysis and arthritis. Pets infected with the bacteria can also pass it on to humans.
4) E. Coli - This bacteria is found in the environment, foods and intestines of humans and animals. Some kinds of E. coli can cause diarrhea, while others cause urinary tract infections, respiratory illness and pneumonia. Good hand and food hygiene should kill the bacteria before it is ingested and causes harm.
5) Listeria - Less common than the other germs, Listeria can cause serious illness and is caught by consuming contaminated food. It primarily affects pregnant women, newborns, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems. Symptoms are similar to a mild flu, with diarrhea and sickness for most however for unborn babies it can be fatal. Once infected it can take anywhere between 1 to 90 days for the illness to develop.
Lockdown takeaway food
When speaking with our respondents about what type of food they’d ordered, we discovered that pizza was the most common social media meal choice, with more than half (51%) of Brits admitting to ordering one, followed by roast dinners (38%), Indian food (27%) and homemade cakes/desserts (21%).
The ten most popular takeaways, and the percentage of people who had ordered one, are as follows:
- Pizza - 51%
- Roast Dinners - 38%
- Indian Food - 27%
- Cakes/desserts - 21%
- Pub food - 20%
- Italian - 18%
- Burgers - 18%
- Chinese - 15%
- Cooked breakfast - 12%
- Peri Peri chicken - 10%
Ordering food on social media
We also asked participants where they buy these homemade takeaways from, and the majority (77%) stated ‘Facebook’ however Snapchat (5%) and Gumtree (10%) were also cited. When asked if they were aware that independent takeaways and food businesses were required by law to undergo safety/hygiene checks, more than a third (34%) stated ‘no’.
Oliver Warburton, founder of Oliver’s Kitchen, said,
“At Oliver’s Kitchen we’ve made it our goal to keep up to date with all the latest trends and fads within popular culture, and in particular the food industry. Since the emergence of the coronavirus back in March of last year, the hospitality sector has been one of the hardest hit, with roughly three closures happening for every new opening.
“So, with people spending more and more time indoors, unable to go to their favourite restaurants, it’s no wonder that so many have turned to unregistered vendors selling unique and bespoke homemade meals. However, I was surprised to see how many people were unaware that every food establishment should have a hygiene rating by law!
“It’s a growing trend at the moment, but unfortunately it doesn’t come without its risks. We really do urge people to ensure they know where they are buying their food from, because a nasty spout of food poisoning isn’t fun for anybody, and in serious cases it can be very dangerous.”
