Can Cookery Classes Save the UK Diet?

[Anonymous]

A study conducted in 2011 highlighted the positive effects cookery classes had on families and their eating habits.

After viewing ITV’s Weight Loss Ward, a three part documentary series based in Sunderland, I got to thinking. Whilst looking around I discovered this old article from February 2013 in which researchers from the study had returned to the families and found that the 44 out the 100 original participants who agreed to be interviewed had made significant and long term changes to their diets.

The study was a government funding experiment conducted by the University of Glasgow. The study showed parents how to budget, prepare and cook simple yet nutritious meals.

Study leader Dr Ada Garcia said that, although the study numbers were small due to difficulties in re-contacting people after a year, the results showed that such programmes had a measurable effect on people’s diets. “This suggests that the intervention has benefited participants’ eating habits and health not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term,” she added.

Cooking fresh meals can seem impractical, expensive and daunting to families on tight budgets or unaccustomed to varied diets. Yet these cookery classes have shown that it doesn’t have to be this way. A great deal of maintaining a healthy diet comes down to education, not cost.

Prof Alan Maryon-Davis, former president of the Faculty of Public Health, said more research, including a controlled trial, should be the next step. “Budgets are being cut and local authorities are not going to fund stuff unless its been shown to be effective. But this is pretty encouraging.”

It is about giving these families the confidence to make these basic changes to their diets and it is indeed encouraging to know that simple cookery classes like these can have such a long lasting and positive effect on participants.

[Author]

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