Teach youngsters cooking skills, study urges

Ensuring children learn vital cooking skills can help encourage healthy eating, research has shown.

And letting youngsters get stuck in and make a mess at home is one of the best ways for them to learn, according to the results of recently published studies.

Research carried out by City University London into the Liverpool-based Can Cook social enterprise project, aimed at helping people improve their cooking skills, highlighted the "powerful impact" knowing how to cook can have on eating habits.

One area of research looked at the effect of a cooking competition in a secondary school. Following the event, there was a 23 per cent increase in the percentage of pupils eating vegetables and a 27.5 per cent rise in the percentage eating them four times a day.

In total, just under one-third of the pupils said their eating habits had changed following the sessions.

Robbie Davison, director of Can Cook said: "The solution is a simple one. Give children and young people access to good facilities and training and teach them to cook the healthier version of what they know and want to eat and you will get change - this is our method and it works."