Cooking With Kids: A Preliminary Conceptual Model of Child Involvement in Home Food Preparation and Diet Quality

Abstract

Developing culinary skills in children is an increasingly popular approach to health promotion, and parents can play a critical role in this by involving children in food preparation. Yet little is known about how parents cook with their children or the pathways linking child food involvement and downstream health. Our objective was to develop a conceptual framework of this process. The framework was developed through data, investigator, and theory triangulation. We leveraged a re-analysis of observations of parents preparing meals with their children in the home (n = 15) consensus-building discussions between members of the research team and experts in related fields, and from the extant scientific literature. We identified three interrelated ways child involvement in food preparation can be optimized to support downstream health: 1) skill building, 2) positive environment, and 3) teaching. Through modeling cooking practices, exposure to new tasks/foods, and encouragement, parents transmit cooking skills to their children tailored to their home food environment. Additionally, parents nurture child autonomy and receptivity to learning by creating a positive emotional climate during food preparation. This creates an optimal setting for children to learn complex cognitive skills, such as those related to executive functioning (EF), which are critical to ensuring other forms of knowledge learned (e.g., measurement and counting) transfer to academic success in the real-world across subjects like reading, science, and math. As better EF is linked to higher dietary quality and lower weight, the combination of cooking/food skills with improved EF executive functioning will synergistically support healthy eating. By involving children in food preparation, parents can facilitate the development of healthy cognitive skills and eating behaviors, which have been shown to influence health into adulthood across a variety of domains. Investment in cooking education for kids should be accompanied by parallel training for parents on how to optimally engage children in food preparation at home. This research was supported in part by the USDA/ARS under Cooperative Agreement No. 58-3092-0-001.