Bacon from a pig? You must be joking!

Fewer than half of young UK adults know that butter comes from a dairy cow, and a third do not know eggs come from hens, according to a survey.

More than a third of 16- to 23-year-olds (36 per cent) do not know that bacon comes from pigs, and four in 10 (40 per cent) failed to link milk with an image of a dairy cow, with seven per cent linking it to wheat, a poll of 2,000 people for aid organisation Leaf (Linking Environment and Farming) found.

Some 41 per cent correctly linked butter to a dairy cow, with eight per cent linking it to beef cattle, while 67 per cent were able to link eggs to an image of a hen, but 11 per cent thought they came from wheat or maize.

A total of six per cent of those who were questioned knew that salad dressing could come from rapeseed oil, compared with the national average of 24 per cent among all age groups.

Although four in 10 young adults (43 per cent) considered themselves knowledgeable about where their food comes from, the results revealed a shocking lack of knowledge about how the most basic food is produced, the organisation said.

Leaf chief executive Caroline Drummond said: “We often hear reports that our food knowledge may be declining, but this new research shows how bad the situation is becoming.”