Who really owns recipes?

How one well-known company is harvesting recipes and images from other websites to use on its own subscription-only app. It might be legal but is it right?

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

Perhaps food writers and recipe developers like me who are active on social media and the internet only have ourselves to blame. We share images of dishes we create for free and often give away the actual recipes, too.

We do this for lots of reasons. At its best, social media is a creative space where food writers can exchange ideas and knowledge. It’s also our shop window, our portfolio, a place to showcase our work in the hope it catches the right eye one day and leads - god forbid - to a paid project.

Food bloggers, and by this I mean recipe developers with websites, often offer free public access, too. These recipes are the the reason advertisers pay to promote their products on the page.

The digital space is also vital for ‘legacy’ food publications. The survival of those still struggling on in print rests on advertising revenue from their online versions (many of which are free to access, for the time being). Digital recipe collections also encourage readers to buy actual physical magazines, while for supermarkets, online recipes steer readers to their bricks-and-mortar shops.

My point is that ‘free’ recipes have a value and they’re not there for the taking. They're not intended for other organisations and individuals to use for their own commercial enrichment. Or at least they shoudnt’t be.

I’m not talking about thinly veiled plagiarism or nicking other people’s ideas - that’s a whole different miasma I might dive into one day. And I’m not even talking about AI being used to scoop up recipes and writing styles from cookbooks, which I’ve ranted about before.

In this case I’m referring to organisations (and individuals) that use recipes from other people’s websites on their own platform, which they then charge people to access. The ZOE app: I’m looking at you.

Full disclosure: I have free access to the ZOE personalised nutrition app because I tried the programme for a feature I was commissioned to write for the Telegraph. But my husband is a paid up member and we recently started using the app a bit more to improve the quality of our diets.

Let me explain how I discovered the recipes on ZOE belong to other people.

Recipes are a key part of the package that users pay for when they sign up to the ZOE programme: it costs a minimum £25 per month subscription plus £299 to take all the tests that are analysed to determine a person’s ‘unique biology’.

Until recently, I hadn’t tried any of the vast number of recipes for meals and snacks on the app because I rarely cook from recipes. But when I recently tried one it didn’t work. I don’t mean the dish tasted horrible, but the recipe itself was flawed: chunks of the method were missing and the ingredients were jumbled, so I didn’t know which to add where. It occurred to me - and I could be wrong - that the recipe had been scooped up off internet and in the process, its format had been screwed up. But it got me wondering where the recipes on the ZOE app actually came from.

So, I scrolled through dozens and dozens of them. It was clear that some had been uploaded by app users themselves. But I discovered that the vast majority originated on other websites. How do I know this? Because it states so at the top of the recipes, and there’s even a link to click through to the original site.

The hopeless recipe I tried was just from ‘Instagram’. But many recipes on the app are from very well known food websites, or the websites of food bloggers. Almost all of the UK’s leading food publications have ‘contributed’ recipes and images: Waitrose magazine, delicious magazine, BBC food magazine, Red Magazine, Tesco magazine, BBC.co.uk and dozens of private websites run by bloggers in the UK, the US, New Zealand and Australia.

Had all these organisations and individuals given permission for their recipes and images to be used? It appears not.

I’ve approached a number of them and so far I’ve failed to find a single one that has approved the use of their work on the ZOE app. In fact, those I spoke to were shocked - not surprising given it’s happening behind a paywall. And they’re not pleased. One organisation quickly had its legal department on the case and others will follow, I imagine.

The problem isn’t just that content has been used without permission. There’s an implication that the websites that appear on the recipes have a commercial arrangement with ZOE, when they don’t. And I can’t imagine the BBC is happy that some of its public service content has been appropriated by a commercial entity like this.

I’m not a copyright expert, recipes are tricky territory and it could be that ZOE has done nothing legally wrong. After all, they acknowledge the source of the recipes (although they haven’t credited the photographers), and no-one at ZOE is pretending they created the BBC.co.uk’s lentil and tomato soup. Maybe they’ve even obtained permission in some cases.

But what does it mean for my own recipes and for everyone else who develops them? Who actually owns them? Is anyone free to take and make money out of them in this way?

One blogger whose work appears on the ZOE app was furious and tearful when I spoke to her. “People just think that because a recipe is on the internet it’s there for the taking,” she said. “It happens all the time. There are so many people doing this and they just don’t care.” Coming on top of the arrival of AI, she wonders whether there’s a future in recipe development at all.

I asked the folk at ZOE for a comment and a spokesperson said: “In the ZOE app, members are able to upload recipes they like from external websites, to see how well the recipe scores for them. These recipes are then visible for all members to see. All recipe sources are always credited and the source is always linked. We are in touch with recipe owners who have concerns and are resolving the matter with them directly.”

It was also confirmed that one organisation had been in touch to discuss the matter and any content identified as originating on its site had been taken down ‘for the moment’ while discussions continued.

So, food people, those recipes you worked long and hard to develop, the ideas for which you plucked out of your own creative minds? It seems they don’t belong to you at all. Or at least some people don’t think so. That shop window you’ve carefully put together? It’s ripe for a smash and grab.