Kids Who Cook Make Healthier Food Choices

“Kids who like fruits and veg­eta­bles more tend to eat them more fre­quently and have bet­ter diets,” said lead author Yen Li Chu, a post-doctoral fel­low in the School of Public Health. “These data show that encour­ag­ing kids to get involved in meal prepa­ra­tion could be an effec­tive health pro­mo­tion strat­egy for schools and parents.”

Published last month by Public Health Nutrition in an early online release, the study involved a sur­vey of stu­dents in 151 schools across Alberta to learn about kids’ expe­ri­ences with cook­ing and food choices.

Nearly one-third of chil­dren reported help­ing with meal prep at least once a day; another one-third said they helped one to three times a week. A quar­ter of chil­dren helped once a month, and 12.4 per cent avoided the kitchen completely.

In gen­eral, chil­dren pre­ferred fruits to veg­gies, but chil­dren who helped with cook­ing showed a greater pref­er­ence for both. Vegetable pref­er­ence was also 10 per cent higher among chil­dren who helped cook.

The data also showed that kids who did meal prep and cook­ing were more con­fi­dent about the impor­tance of mak­ing health­ier food choices.

Paul Veugelers, co-author and Canada Research Chair in Population Health at the U of A, said get­ting chil­dren to eat health­ier food pro­motes bone and mus­cle devel­op­ment, learn­ing and self-esteem.

“Good food is impor­tant for us. It keeps weight gain away—and more impor­tant than that, it keeps chronic dis­ease away,” Veugelers said. “The over­ar­ch­ing objec­tive of our work is to lower the bur­den of chronic dis­ease in our soci­ety. A healthy diet is right at the top.”

Chu said the results under­score the value of get­ting kids inter­ested in meal­time activ­i­ties in the home, but added there could be room for schools to get involved, too.

“You can go into schools and have cook­ing classes and cook­ing clubs to help them boost their fruit and veg­etable intake and make health­ier choices,” she said.

Though this sur­vey dealt with Grade 5 stu­dents, the lessons are equally applic­a­ble to older youth, includ­ing post-secondary stu­dents, added Veugelers.

“For many of them, it may be the first time they leave home, the first time in their lives they’re respon­si­ble for their own diets,” he said. “There are lessons here for them too, to form groups and take turns cook­ing, and pay atten­tion to good meal preparation.”

This work was part of the Real Kids Alberta eval­u­a­tion funded by Alberta Health. Real Kids Alberta is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tive between the School of Public Health and Alberta Health to pro­vide direc­tions to improve eat­ing habits and activ­ity lev­els in Alberta chil­dren and youth.

Source: University of Alberta Release