Italian food is the most popular cuisine in the world

From pizza to pasta, it's the ultimate comfort food

Pasta made with vegetable-based flours can be considered a vegetable on school lunch menus, according to new USDA guidelines. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Italian food is officially the most popular cuisine in the world.

An international YouGov study asked more than 25,000 people across 24 countries which of 34 national cuisines they had tried and whether they liked or disliked them.

The figures revealed that pizza and pasta were among some of the most popular dishes in the world, with Italian cuisine receiving an average popularity score of 84 per cent across all the countries surveyed.

Naturally, the biggest fans of Italian food were the Italians themselves, with 99 per cent saying they enjoyed their national dishes, followed by the Spanish (94 per cent) and French (92 per cent).

Chinese food came in second place, which received an average popularity score of 78 per cent.

The figures showed the cuisine was liked by 95 per cent of Chinese people, followed by diners from Singapore (94 per cent) and Hong Kong (91 per cent).

The world’s third most popular cuisine was revealed as Japanese, scoring an average of 71 per cent.

British cuisine however didn’t prove a popular choice across mainland Europe.

Despite 91 per cent of Britons saying they liked their own national cuisine, less than half of those in other European countries agreed.

Diners from Germany, Spain, Denmark and France held British food in particular contempt, with just 25 to 28 per cent saying they enjoyed it.

However, British cuisine was more warmly received further afield with 76 per cent of Singaporeans and 71 per cent of Australians admitting to liking the cuisine.

As for the types of food Brits enjoy, 91 per cent said they liked Italian food the most, followed by Chinese (86 per cent) and Indian (84 per cent).

Italian food is the most popular cuisine in the world (YouGov)

According to the survey, the least popular cuisine in the world is Peruvian, receiving an average score of just 32 per cent, scoring only fractionally higher than Finnish food.

The lowest opinion held by a country for another's cuisine was Japan towards Saudi Arabian food, with just 11 per cent of Japanese diners stating that they liked it.

In fact, the survey found that Japanese people were the harshest critics overall with 23 out of the 34 countries scoring less than 50 per cent among respondents.