How do we to help build confidence, enable people to enjoy simple home cooking and bring about social change with our work?
Theory of Change for now we’re cooking
The impetus for now we’re cooking comes from evidence that one of the barriers to a healthy diet is not having the skills, knowledge and confidence to shop for, and prepare, healthy meals (The Scottish Diet Action Plan, 1996).
We think that the benefits of running community cooking classes extend beyond improved cooking skills and can be a springboard to activities, friendships and connections that combat loneliness.
We have used theory of change (see https://knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/how-to/how-to-build-a-theory-of-change) to describe how we expect outcomes to occur over the short, medium and longer term as a result of our work here (see the full paper here (.pdf) ), also detailing evidence for the model, the assumptions we make, and what will enable us to achieve our aims. We summarise it in the diagram below:
Interesting context for our work – the idea, the philosophy, the practice
Kitchen Therapy: Cooking Up Mental Well-Being
This is an excellent article, from the archive of the journal Psychology Today, which explores the ideas of cooking as restorative, promoting mental health and well being.
Culinary Therapy helps our workshop attendees think about their nutrition, using the kitchen as a source of mindfulness, as well as of bodily health. Read more…
7 Emotional Benefits Of Cooking That’ll Make You Want To Actually Use Your Kitchen
From the Bustle web site, this article looks at how culinary activity promotes well-being, makes you feel good and gets you in ‘the flow’. The video selection is great too! We’ll never cook with our dog in the kitchen in the same way again…
Read more…the site does contain advertisements.
Psychosocial Benefits of Cooking Interventions: A Systematic Review
A solid academic paper from the US National Institute of Health and the US National Library of Medicine. The paper, authored by Farmer, Touchton-Leonard and Ross, seeks to review all the current peer-reviewed literature on cooking interventions and seeks to measure the effectiveness of such work.
”Cooking interventions are used in therapeutic and rehabilitative settings; however, little is known about the influence of these interventions on psychosocial outcomes. This systematic review examines the research evidence regarding the influence of cooking interventions on psychosocial outcomes”.
Read more here…a great selection on cooking classes as therapy and health outcomes!
