An international study of over 25,000 people in 24 countries has found that pizza and pasta were one of the most popular foods in the world.
Respondents were asked which of 34 national cuisines they had tried and whether they liked or disliked them, and Italian food was the most well-liked. The cuisine received an average popularity score of 84 percent across the 24 nations studied.
Patriotically, the biggest fans of Italian food are Italians themselves, with 99 percent enjoying their national cuisine. Other big fans include Spaniards (94 percent of those who tried it say they liked it) and the French (92 per cent), while the least impressed by Italian food were the Chinese (59 percent).
Second place behind Italian food goes to Chinese cuisine, which scored, on an average, 78 percent across the countries surveyed. It is liked by 95 percent of Chinese people, with Singaporeans (94 percent of those who have tried it say they like it) and people from Hong Kong (91 percent) also being fans. The cuisine is least popular in Saudi Arabia (54 percent) and Indonesia (57 percent).
The world’s third most popular cuisine is Japanese, scoring an average of 71 percent across the 24 nations. Aside from the 94 percent of Japanese people who like it, 94 percent of Singaporeans who have tried it also do, as well as 93 per cent of the people of Hong Kong. Once again, it is the Saudi Arabians who are the least enamoured, with only 43 percent enjoying it.
At the bottom of the table comes Peruvian cuisine, which received an average score of only 32 percent. Scoring only fractionally higher (and rounding to the same percentage score) was Finnish cuisine.
It should be pointed out, however, that Finland was one of the countries surveyed but Peru was not, meaning that the loyal 94 percent of Finns who like their own country’s cuisine was enough to give them the edge. Had the study included Peruvian opinions, Finnish cuisine would likely have come bottom.
The lowest opinion any nation had for another nation’s cuisine was Japan towards Saudi Arabian cuisine, with just 11 percent of Japanese people who have tried it saying that they liked it.
The survey found that Japanese people were the harshest food critics of any nation surveyed. Of the 34 cuisines in the study, 23 scored less than 50 percent among Japanese respondents. On an average, only 39 percent of Japanese people said they liked any given foreign food.
By contrast, it was the Filipinos who were the most likely to appreciate international cuisine. An average of 67 percent of Filipinos who had tried any given cuisine said they liked it, with only five types of food being liked by fewer than half.
Indian food all the way!
Indian cuisine was among the top 10 popular cuisines in the world, standing at number nine, with an average popularity score of 62 percent across 24 countries.
Other than their own cuisine, which 93 percent of Indians claimed to like, they were also found to have a palate for Italian (80 per cent), Chinese (77 percent) and American cuisines (75 percent). However, Indians have lower tolerance for Norwegian, Filipino, Finnish and Peruvian cuisines.
While 77 percent Singaporeans and 70 percent Malaysians like Indian cuisine, the rest of South-East Asia has a lower preference for our food. Forty-nine percent of Indonesians and 44 percent of Vietnamese who have tasted the food claimed to like it.
However, Thais held the cuisine in disdain, with only 27 percent who tried it stating they liked it. However, it was actually China that had the least liking for Indian food, with only 26 percent saying they liked it.
Indian cuisine was more warmly received in the European countries, with over half the people in the surveyed countries saying they liked it. It is particularly popular in Britain (84 percent of those who have tried it said they liked it), Norway (75 percent), France and Finland (71 percent).
Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of Australians were fans of Indian cuisine. Even in the Middle-Eastern countries, Indian food was a hit, with 76 percent in Saudi Arabia and 71 percent in the UAE (United Arab Emirated) saying they liked it.
