WHY IS TEACHING KIDS TO COOK IMPORTANT?
Teaching children the basics of cooking is a great way to broaden their knowledge of nutritious food and nutrition in a practical way. Eating patterns that begin in childhood affect health and well-being throughout life, so early education is an important step in starting children with a positive relationship with food, and this begins with cooking classes in primary school.
Why is teaching kids to cook at school important?
Culinary education naturally cultivates teamwork in children, has strong curriculum links across key learning areas and helps develop critical thinking skills and an understanding of the land and our communities. When children are involved in hands-on learning through digging and picking, mixing and chopping, and sitting together and sharing a meal together, the impact is multi-faceted. Children appreciate living sustainably, show a willingness to experiment with foods, a heightened self-confidence, readiness to absorb and recall-related information and display an appetite for learning more.
In a safe school environment, the Cooking classes help children use a range of cooking skills to prepare, cook and eat healthy snacks and meals. Students can then transfer their knowledge to other cooking situations and re-create these dishes at home with confidence. Nutrition messages taught at school lend weight to the authority of information. Higher levels of cooking skills and food knowledge are associated with higher vegetable consumption and healthier eating.
Schools are a sensible and popular setting to implement programs for equipping children with cooking skills because they offer continuous, intensive contact with children during their formative years.
What are the benefits of healthy cooking and eating?
Educating children about cooking is the cornerstone of good health. As dietary habits and healthy eating track from childhood to adolescence and then to adulthood, learning to cook nutritious snacks and meals at school contributes to the long-term well-being of students.
Health education and cooking have become increasingly important as a strategy to decrease childhood obesity. Educating children at a younger age about how to cook wholesome food can help prevent future health disparities and diseases associated with obesity that are prevalent in Australia and around the world.
Research reveals that hands-on learning promotes success in science, numeracy and literacy, helping to develop critical thinking capability and sustainability practices. It has been shown that children who have prepared a dish at school cook the same recipe again at home, and more than two-thirds of those students cook the recipe multiple times. This evidence suggests that the program may be an effective way to help contribute to stabilising the rate of childhood obesity.
By giving students the knowledge needed to make healthy food choices, they can be empowered to take better control of their own health.
