Virtuous English AcademyFood & Lifestyle — B1 English Vocabulary
This B1 vocabulary list gathers 40 intermediate English words about food & lifestyle — cuisine, cooking and eating well. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using food & lifestyle words in English
Cooking verbs are one of the few areas where English is more precise than most languages rather than less. Roast, grill, bake and fry all describe applying heat, and swapping them changes the dish. The page also contains a register point — cuisine is not simply a smarter word for food — and one of the more useful adjective pairs in food writing: tasty and bland.
What to watch out for
The heat decides the verb
Bake is dry heat in an oven, mainly for bread, cakes and pastry. Roast is dry heat in an oven for meat and vegetables, usually with fat. Grill is heat from above in British English — Americans call that broiling and reserve grill for a barbecue. Fry is in hot fat in a pan. Note that the past participle used as an adjective sometimes shortens: roast beef but roasted vegetables.
Chop, slice and stir describe the shape of the action
Chop makes rough pieces with a downward cut: chop an onion. Slice makes thin flat pieces: slice the bread. Stir moves food around in a pan or a cup with a spoon, and it takes no preposition: stir the sauce. These are precise instructions in a recipe rather than stylistic choices, which is why recipes are such useful reading at this level.
Cuisine is a style; vegan is not vegetarian
Cuisine means a national or regional style of cooking — Thai cuisine, regional French cuisine — and is uncountable in that sense. It is not a general word for food, so the cuisine was cold sounds strange. And a vegetarian avoids meat and fish; a vegan avoids all animal products including eggs, dairy and honey. Restaurants take the distinction seriously.
Words learners mix up
Three tables: four adjectives for how something tastes, four words for food you did not cook just now, and the nouns for what is actually in it — where the countability is not what you would guess.
Four adjectives for how it tastes
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| tasty | Full of flavour and enjoyable. Informal and warm, and it describes savoury food far more often than sweet. | That was a really tasty soup. |
| bland | Having almost no flavour. Always a criticism, and the opposite of both tasty and spicy. | The sauce was disappointingly bland. |
| savoury | Salty or spiced rather than sweet — a whole category in British cooking, not a level of taste. | They served savoury pastries with drinks. |
| sour | Sharp like lemon. It also means gone off, which is why the milk has gone sour is a warning. | The apples were far too sour to eat. |
The savoury and sweet division runs through British food language and has no single equivalent in many others: a menu, a shop and a supermarket aisle will all be organised around it. Sour is the one that carries two meanings, and only context tells you whether a lemon is being described or a carton of milk is being thrown away.
Food you did not cook just now
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| leftovers | Plural only. Food from an earlier meal, and it takes a plural verb even for a single portion. | We had the leftovers for lunch. |
| takeaway | The British noun for a meal collected or delivered, and for the shop itself. America says takeout. | Shall we get a takeaway tonight? |
| frozen | An adjective from an irregular verb: freeze, froze, frozen. Frozen food is a fixed category. | I keep a bag of frozen peas for emergencies. |
| homemade | Written as one word in British English, and it is a compliment on a menu. | The soup is homemade. |
Takeaway is one of the clearest British and American splits in everyday food language, and it doubles as an adjective in a takeaway curry. Leftovers is worth storing in the plural from the start, since there is no singular at all, and English uses the rest of the food when it needs one.
What is actually in it
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| protein | Uncountable in everyday use — plenty of protein — and countable only in scientific writing. | Beans are a good source of protein. |
| carbohydrate | Usually plural, and almost always shortened to carbs in speech. | She has cut down on carbohydrates. |
| vitamin | Countable, and named by letter: vitamin C. British and American English stress it differently. | Oranges are full of vitamin C. |
| dairy | Uncountable, and it works as both noun and adjective: dairy products, cut out dairy. | He avoids dairy completely. |
The stress on vitamin is the small thing worth fixing: Britain says it with a short first syllable and America with a long one, and both are correct in their own place. Note that a source of is the standard frame for all four of these words, and it takes no article before the nutrient itself.
Collocations that sound natural
Six words from the practical language of cooking and eating. Three of them are also verbs, and two appear in idioms that have travelled well beyond the kitchen.
spice
add spicea blend of spicesspice it upspicy food
Uncountable as a quality and countable when naming individual ones. Spice it up has escaped the kitchen entirely and means to make anything more interesting, and the adjective spicy is what a menu uses rather than spiced.
ripe
perfectly ripenot quite ripeover-riperipen on the windowsill
Fruit is ripe when it is ready to eat, and the verb ripen describes it getting there. British English says over-ripe with a hyphen for fruit that has gone too far, which is a stage before rotten.
picnic
have a picnicgo on a picnica picnic basketno picnic
Countable, and both have and go on work in British English. The idiom it was no picnic means something was difficult and unpleasant, and it appears far more often in speech than the literal noun does.
buffet
a buffet lunchhelp yourself at the buffetan all-you-can-eat buffeta cold buffet
Countable, and the British pronunciation keeps the French silent t. It describes food laid out for people to serve themselves, so the verb attached to it is always help yourself rather than be served.
microwave
in the microwavemicrowave it for two minutesa microwave mealmicrowave-safe
Noun and verb with one spelling, and British English shortens the noun to the microwave rather than using a separate word. Food goes in the microwave, and the hyphenated microwave-safe appears on packaging.
balanced
a balanced dietwell balanceda balanced mealbalanced nutrition
A balanced diet is a fixed phrase in health writing and one of the most examinable collocations on this topic. Note that diet in English means what you normally eat as much as it means losing weight, so a balanced diet is not a weight-loss plan.
Where each word belongs
Seven words carrying a country, a menu or a level of formality. Food vocabulary is where British and American English diverge most sharply, and one word here reverses completely between them.
- crispsBritish · and the chips reversalIn Britain crisps are the thin fried slices in a packet and chips are the hot thick ones served with fish. In America those same packet snacks are chips and the hot ones are fries. This is the single most confusing food pair between the two countries.
- beverageFormal · menus and signs onlyThe formal word for a drink, found on menus, airline trolleys and official notices and almost never in conversation, where everybody says a drink. Using it in speech sounds like reading aloud from a sign.
- cookeryBritish · America says cookingBritain uses cookery for the subject and the skill — a cookery book, a cookery course — where America says cooking or cookbook. Both countries use cooking for the ongoing activity, so only the compound nouns differ.
- dinerTwo countries, two meaningsIn British English a diner is a person eating a meal, especially in a restaurant review. In American English it is a particular kind of cheap roadside restaurant. The two senses have no overlap, which makes the word genuinely ambiguous in international writing.
- aromaPositive onlyA pleasant smell, especially from food or coffee, and it is never used about anything unwelcome. The neutral word is smell, which can go either way, and the negative ones are odour and stink. The adjective aromatic is likewise always positive.
- appetiserAmerican-leaning · Britain says starterThe small dish before the main course. British menus overwhelmingly say starter, and appetiser reads as American or as a hotel translation. Britain also spells it with an s where America uses a z.
- utensilWriting · the everyday words are specificThe formal collective word for the tools you cook and eat with. In real British kitchens people name the individual thing — a spoon, a whisk, a pan — and reserve utensils for lists and labels. Stress falls on the second syllable.
Sentences to try
Four frames straight out of a recipe. Read a real English recipe afterwards and see how many you recognise.
- Chop the onions finely and fry them in a little oil.
- Roast the vegetables for forty minutes.
- The soup was rather bland, so I added more seasoning.
- She cooks wonderful Italian cuisine using very few spices.
Questions about food & lifestyle vocabulary
What is the difference between bake, roast and grill?
All three use dry heat, but the food and the position of the heat differ. Bake is for bread, cakes, pastry and dishes cooked in an oven without added fat. Roast is for meat and vegetables cooked in an oven, usually with oil or fat, and produces a browned outside. Grill in British English means cooking under direct heat from above; American English calls that broil and uses grill for cooking over a barbecue. Fry is different again: in hot fat, in a pan on the hob.
What is the difference between vegan and vegetarian?
A vegetarian does not eat meat or fish but usually does eat eggs, milk, cheese and other animal products. A vegan avoids every animal product, including dairy, eggs and often honey, and many extend that to leather and wool. Both work as nouns and adjectives: She is a vegan, a vegan restaurant. Related terms you will see on British menus are pescatarian, who eats fish but not meat, and plant-based, which usually means the same as vegan.
Is "cuisine" just a formal word for food?
No. Cuisine means a style or tradition of cooking associated with a place or a culture: Japanese cuisine, the cuisine of southern Italy. It is uncountable in that sense and rather formal. It does not mean the food on your plate, so The cuisine was delicious sounds odd where The food was delicious is natural. In French the word also means kitchen, which is where the confusion usually starts.