Food comes up in IELTS more often than you might expect. In Writing Task 2, you may be asked whether sugary drinks should be taxed, why people cook at home less and less, whether children should learn to cook at school and how to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away. In Speaking Part 3, the examiner wants to know how eating habits have changed in your country and whether fast food is a danger to the next generation.
The main trap in this topic is the word diet. Many learners only know it as a weight-loss plan, so they steer clear of it when they write about health. But in English, diet is also simply the food a person usually eats; cutting calories is a separate phrase, go on a diet. For essays about nutrition, you’ll need a balanced diet and healthy eating, while nutrition describes food and its effect on the body: good nutrition, poor nutrition.
Below are 28 collocations on the topic with Band 7-level examples, the mistakes learners most often make with them, and an example of how LetsWords gives feedback on a sentence you write. You’ll find the other exam topics in IELTS vocabulary by topic.
Food and nutrition: words and collocations
Diet and eating habits
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a balanced diet | eating the right mix of different foods | Children who grow up on a balanced diet are less likely to struggle with their weight as adults. |
| eating habits | the way a person usually eats | Eating habits formed in childhood often last a lifetime. |
| have a sweet tooth | to love sweet food | Children who have a sweet tooth are an easy target for advertisers. |
| home-cooked meals | food prepared at home | Families that share home-cooked meals tend to eat more vegetables. |
| skip meals | to miss breakfast, lunch or dinner | Many office workers skip meals and then overeat in the evening. |
| portion sizes | how much food is served at once | Portion sizes in restaurants have grown noticeably over the past few decades. |
| eat out | to eat at a café or restaurant | People in big cities eat out several times a week. |
| cut down on sugar | to eat less sugar | Doctors advise most adults to cut down on sugar rather than give it up entirely. |
Fast food and processed food
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| processed food | food changed industrially before it is sold | Processed food is cheap, but it often contains hidden salt. |
| junk food | unhealthy food with little nutritional value | Advertising junk food to children should be strictly limited. |
| convenience food | food that is quick and easy to prepare | Busy parents increasingly rely on convenience food. |
| ready meals | complete dishes you only need to heat up | Supermarket ready meals are often high in salt. |
| high in sugar / fat / salt | containing a lot of sugar, fat or salt | Many breakfast cereals marketed to children are high in sugar. |
| nutritional value | how much a food does for your body | Crisps and fizzy drinks have very little nutritional value. |
| additives and preservatives | substances added to change food or make it last | Bread from a local bakery usually contains no additives or preservatives. |
Food and government policy
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| promote healthy eating | to encourage people to eat well | Free school lunches are one way to promote healthy eating. |
| obesity rates | the share of people who are seriously overweight | Obesity rates have risen sharply in many developed countries. |
| impose a tax on | to introduce a tax on something | Several countries have imposed a tax on sugary drinks. |
| a sugar tax | a tax on sugary drinks | Critics argue that a sugar tax hits poorer families hardest. |
| food labelling | information about ingredients and nutrition on packaging | Clear food labelling helps shoppers make informed choices. |
| make informed choices | to decide with the facts in front of you | Consumers cannot make informed choices if labels are confusing. |
Production and consumption
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| food production | growing and making food | Food production will have to increase as the population grows. |
| food waste | food that is thrown away | Supermarkets could reduce food waste by donating unsold food to charities. |
| food security | everyone having reliable access to enough food | Climate change poses a serious threat to food security. |
| local produce | fruit, vegetables and other food from nearby farms | Buying local produce supports small farmers. |
| intensive farming | farming that produces as much as possible from the land and animals | Intensive farming has made meat cheaper, but at a cost to animal welfare. |
| a plant-based diet | eating mostly or only food from plants | More young people are switching to a plant-based diet. |
| meet the demand for | to supply as much as people want | Farmers are struggling to meet the demand for organic food. |
Common mistakes
1. Rich of
A balanced diet should be rich of fibre.
A balanced diet should be rich in fibre.
The preposition is part of the collocation: rich in. The same goes for rich in vitamins and rich in protein.
2. Many food
People buy too many food and throw half of it away.
People buy too much food and throw half of it away.
Food in the general sense is uncountable, so it’s too much food, not many.
3. Bad to your health
Sugary drinks are bad to your health.
Sugary drinks are bad for your health. / Sugary drinks are harmful to your health.
Bad takes for: bad for your health, bad for children. If you want a stronger, more formal word, use harmful to.
4. More vegetable
Children should eat more fresh vegetable.
Children should eat more fresh vegetables.
Vegetable is a countable noun, so in general statements it goes in the plural: eat more vegetables, fruit and vegetables.
How LetsWords explains mistakes like these
While you’re reading a table, every word looks familiar. The mistakes appear when you write. Here’s what one task in LetsWords looks like.
You’re reviewing a balanced diet. LetsWords shows you its meaning in your native language, you recall the English expression and write a sentence about nutrition:
Doctors advise to eat a balanced nutrition.
The feedback, which LetsWords gives in your native language, points out two mistakes:
- advise to eat → advise eating: when you don’t say who is being advised, you need advise doing, so advise eating (or advise people to eat);
- a balanced nutrition → a balanced diet: the food you eat every day is your diet: eat a balanced diet.
Doctors advise eating a balanced diet.
A few days later, the expression comes back in review, and you use it in a new situation, for example in a Speaking answer about school lunches. That’s how a collocation from a list becomes one you can pull from memory and write without a mistake.
Start practising with feedback on your mistakes
When you sign up, you choose IELTS as your goal and pick your level, and LetsWords sets up your practice. You can try the feedback before you pay.
Using these collocations in Writing Task 2
An exam-style task:
In many countries, people are eating more processed food and cooking less at home. Why is this happening, and what can be done to encourage healthier eating habits?
A model paragraph on solutions:
One effective way to promote healthy eating is to make the healthier choice the easier one. Governments could tax sugary drinks and use the revenue to subsidise fresh fruit and vegetables, so that a balanced diet becomes affordable for families on low incomes. Clearer food labelling would also help: when a package states plainly that its contents are high in sugar, shoppers are more likely to think twice before buying it. Finally, schools should teach basic cooking skills. Teenagers who can prepare simple home-cooked meals are less dependent on convenience food, and the eating habits they develop at sixteen are likely to stay with them as adults.
Why this paragraph works. The first sentence answers the second part of the question directly, and each solution is then explained through how it works: the tax makes healthy food cheaper, the labels make shoppers stop and think, cooking lessons reduce dependence on ready-made food. The vocabulary is precise rather than rare: the examiner sees collocations used exactly where they belong, and that does more for Lexical Resource than a couple of “clever” words. Also and finally guide the reader through the solutions without clutter.
Using them in Speaking
Part 3 question: How have eating habits in your country changed in recent years?
I’d say the biggest change is that people eat out far more than they used to, and delivery apps have made takeaways incredibly easy to get. When I was a child, most families sat down to home-cooked meals every evening. On the other hand, younger people seem more aware of the nutritional value of what they eat: lots of my friends read labels now and are trying to cut down on sugar. So it’s a mixed picture, really.
In a spoken answer, the same collocations sound more relaxed: I’d say, really and on the other hand keep it natural, while precise collocations show the range of your vocabulary.
Practise for free
- product: goods made to be sold, and why your weekly food shop is groceries;
- preservative: a substance that stops food going bad;
- recipe: instructions for a dish, not a doctor’s prescription;
- cut down on: eating less of something, not giving it up;
- rich in: full of protein, vitamins or fibre;
- eat out: having a meal at a café or restaurant;
- go bad: how to say that food has spoiled;
- lose weight: becoming thinner.
From the list to real use
A table helps you recognise a collocation, but in the exam you have to recall it in a second and build it into your idea. Move from the list to real use with LetsWords: work through an IELTS set for your level and add collocations from this page to your collection, such as a balanced diet or processed food. You recall each expression from a prompt and write a sentence with it, LetsWords points out the mistake and explains it in your native language (Russian, Korean or Vietnamese), and spaced repetition brings the expression back until it comes naturally. Then test your vocabulary in a full text: the IELTS Writing section has Task 2 prompts on unhealthy eating and healthy lifestyles (in the Health topic), and a full answer gets detailed feedback on all four criteria, tied to what you actually wrote. When you sign up, you answer a few questions about your goal and level, and LetsWords sets up your practice; you can try the feedback before you pay. You’ll find the other exam topics in IELTS vocabulary by topic.