Do cooking and food preparation skills affect healthy eating in college students?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between food and cooking skills and healthy eating attitudes in college students. The demographic characteristics, anthropometric measurements, nutritional habits, attitudes toward healthy eating, and cooking and food preparation skills were questioned. 16.2% of the students have moderate, 63.5% high, and 20.3% ideally high attitudes toward healthy eating. While a positive and significant correlation was found between the total score and sub‐factor scores of the “Cooking Skills and Food Skills” scale and the total score of the “Attitude Scale for Healthy Nutrition”; a negative statistically significant correlation was found between the total score and sub‐factor scores of the “Cooking Skills and Food Skills” scale and the frequency of consumption of fast‐food, processed meat products, packaged foods, and bread types (p < .05). Cooking and food preparation skills seem to be positively associated with healthy attitudes and habits. Considering this positive association, interventions to improve food and cooking skills may help promote healthy eating attitudes in college students. Developing these skills can shed light on increasing the frequency of cooking at home, consuming healthier foods, and as a result, providing a healthy eating attitude. Therefore, more comprehensive intervention studies are needed in this area.

“I Prefer Eating Less Than Eating Healthy”: Drivers of Food Choice in a Sample of Muslim Adolescents

“…Food habits are therefore seen as a symbol and medium for the reproduction of class/socioeconomic status (SES) [21]. Unhealthy eating habits are noticed to run in families, for example, a young child may develop poor eating habits from their parents and then carry them into adulthood [23] whilst cooking and food preparation skills have a positive association with healthier eating habits and attitudes [24].…”