enhancing food security and physical activity for maori, pacific and ...

Enhancing Food Security and Physical Activity for Māori, Pacific and Low-income PeoplesChapter 3: Food purchasing influences3.1 Enhancing cooking skillsDelvina Gorton, Cliona Ni MhurchuSummaryCooking skills are an important life skill and a means of preparing affordable, healthyfoods. Thus, cooking skills interventions could be a positive means of reducing apotential barrier to food security for some households, however there has been littleresearch conducted assessing their impact on food security. Cooking skillsinterventions do seem, however, to provide benefits such as increased cookingconfidence, cooking frequency, and food hygiene. There also seems to be demandfor cooking skills training from priority populations. There are two common ways toteach cooking skills: through schools (for children), or in community classes (foradults). There is a wide range of cooking skills courses on offer in New Zealand, andit is recommended that existing courses are evaluated and successful formats arebuilt on and expanded. Alongside this, basic cooking skills training should return tothe school curricula.Specific recommendations are that:• practical cooking skills are taught in schools, with a focus on preparingaffordable healthy meals (for example, the NZQA standard to ‘providenutritious low cost food for a family’). The focus in the curriculum should be onpractical, hands-on, cooking skills rather than a focus on food technology.• flexible community-based cooking skills courses are implemented at a nationallevel, with ability to tailor to audiences. These should incorporate the keycomponents for effectiveness identified in this chapter.• community-based cooking skills courses should be evaluated to determinetheir impact on food security.Problem DefinitionFood security encompasses having sufficient food that is nutritious, safe, andacceptable. In order to achieve this, some cooking skills are needed. There has beengrowing concern about an increasing lack of even the most basic cooking skills in bothchildren and adults. This lack of skill leads to a reliance on processed and prepreparedfoods, and limits the use of some cheaper foods and ways of preparingmeals. Stitt has called the growing lack of cooking skills the “deskilling process”,assisted by the removal of cooking skills from education systems in many countriesand expansion of the processed foodstuffs market. 1 He notes that removing cookingskills from the education system will deprive low-income households of a means toafford a healthy diet. Others have stated that “it is essential that children are taughtrelevant food skills if they are to have the choice of eating a healthy diet”. 2Internationally, there is some evidence from cross-sectional studies and qualitativeresearch of a relationship between lack of cooking skills and/or lack of knowledge andfood insecurity (Table 1). Further, some participants in the ENHANCE focus groupsexpressed support for cooking skills training. 3 In focus groups with low-income62