Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of how much it would cost to expand the sample size for the Food Standards Agency's Food and You 2 survey to a minimum of 10,000 households.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) estimates that it would cost approximately an additional £400,000 per year to increase the sample size of the Food and You 2 survey from 4,000 households to 10,000.

A sample size of 4,000 households for each biannual wave of fieldwork provides sufficient accuracy to detect any important changes in the survey’s key estimates at the 95% confidence level. The random probability sampling approach (where households are randomly selected from the postcode address file) and use of weighting helps to ensure the results are representative of the population.

Combining responses from multiple survey waves is a more cost-effective approach where greater accuracy is required. The FSA plans on publishing a combined dataset for Waves 1-6 in autumn 2023. The FSA currently has no plans to increase the sample size for Food and You 2.