Cooking in schools: rewarding teachers for inspiring adolescents to make healthy choices

Abstract

Cooking in schools is an important part of a child's personal development. Children who develop adequate cooking skills and nutritional knowledge are more likely to make healthier food choices in later life. Children carry these new found skills through to adulthood, and there is evidence to suggest that an increased nutritional awareness and ability in cooking skills helps individuals to make effective dietary choices.In the past, there have been a number of cooking-related activities aimed at children and students. Grainchain.com's Inspire! competition aimed to encourage teachers who had developed inspiring cooking-skills related lesson plans to promote the dissemination of effective teaching ideas to less confident colleagues.The Inspire! competition highlighted the imagination, drive and talent that there is within the UK teaching industry to deliver engaging, effective practical cooking lessons. Making the most of these talents is a key part in helping children to develop skills, knowledge and confidence from which they will benefit throughout their adult lives.

Adolescent food literacy programmes: A review of the literature

“…Intervention type and strategies: Practical and basic cooking and/or food preparation skills were the primary focus of most programmes, with 91% of programmes incorporating practical cooking‐related skills. There was a focus on school‐associated programmes such as after school food and cooking clubs, cooking programmes in conjunction with a garden programme and interventions incorporated into the school curriculum . Other intervention types included a series of community‐based cooking classes and culinary camps .…”

“…Target group: Sixty per cent of programmes targeted adolescents in the age range of 11–15 years, 17% targeted adolescents older than 15 years, with the remaining 23% of programmes not stating a specific adolescent target group. Three programmes targeted at‐risk youth including those from culturally diverse or disadvantaged backgrounds, high school dropouts or petty crime .…”

“…Teaching and learning styles: Programmes incorporated both didactic and experiential learning styles. Didactic learning involved structured cooking sessions led by an experienced adult facilitator, such as teachers, guest chefs and trained programme educators . Experiential learning encompassed a range of activities, such as allowing participants to select their own multicultural recipe to prepare and teach to their partner, engaging youth in planning cooking sessions, providing core recipes with limited specificity in ingredients to allow choice, or ‘hands‐on’ activities such as reading menus and food labels .…”

Consumers' interest in learning about cooking: the influence of age, gender and education

“…Cooking skills may be associated with health benefits (Brown and Hermann, ; Carter, ; Engler‐Stringer, ; Foley et al ., ) and with higher quality diets (Woodruff and Hanning, ). An increasing number of publications describe interventions to teach cooking skills with the ultimate goal of improving the health of the population (Quinn et al ., ; Brown and Hermann, ; Beets et al ., ; Clifford et al ., ; Bukhari et al ., ; Fisher et al ., ; Gatenby et al ., ). This renewed interest in cooking is partly a response to the epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease (Lichtenstein and Ludwig, ), and findings that large proportions of the population consume diets containing large amounts of energy dense, nutrient poor products (Moodie et al ., ) and less than recommended amounts of whole foods such as fruits and vegetables (Victorian Population Health Survey, ).…”

Best strategies to improve school-leavers′ knowledge of nutrition and food systems: Views from experts in Iran

“…[202122] However, this investigation has highlighted policies that could improve the quality of education initiatives. Some of these policies components have been reported in the international literature, including the importance of skill-based education programs at schools such as gardening[23] and cooking,[24] integrating nutrition topics with other subjects at schools,[12] employing various techniques for teaching purposes,[1314] and education of school teachers. [13] However, not all policies reported by participants in this study have been discussed previously.…”