We have partnered up with Stevenage Football Club Foundation and Young People’s Mental Health Foundation to create an illustrated cookbook with around 10 family-friendly recipes for main meals. We want to encourage cooking at home and give parents ideas for affordable, quick, and nutritious dishes which they can make together with their children.
Background
Homemade meals tend to be healthier and more affordable than ready-made, processed foods, while learning to cook and eating nutritious meals supports children’s growth, concentration, and long-term health. However, barriers such as cost, limited skills, or perceptions of cooking as time-consuming and challenging discourage families from preparing meals at home. Given the cost-of-living crisis and its impact especially on low-income families, we want to create an accessible resource with easy, tried and tested recipes for budget-friendly healthy meals. Our cookbook will also feature information about nutrition, budgeting, and leftover ideas. We want it to be a practical resource for busy parents, including those who may not feel very confident in the kitchen.
Project Aims
Our project builds on the success of Community Kitchen, a cooking initiative run by Stevenage Football Club Foundation and aimed at families with school-age children living in North Hertfordshire. We want to broaden the reach of the initiative’s message – that home cooking can be a fun family activity – and combine it with accessible information on which foods support good mental health and the importance of making healthy food choices. To achieve our goal, we have partnered up with Stevenage FC Foundation and The Young People’s Mental Health Foundation. We will also work closely with families with children taking part in Community Kitchen sessions and public contributors to ensure our cookbook is a convenient practical resource with clear and straightforward guidance.
Project Activity
- Our goal is to translate academic research and learnings from a community cooking initiative into a tangible, widely accessible resource promoting healthy eating habits and nutritional advice. We want to co-create an illustrated cookbook featuring tried and tested, budget-friendly recipes for easy and healthy main meals which will also offer advice on foods that support good mental health. We are working closely with our partners and public contributors to ensure the cookbook is a convenient and practical resource.
- Our project focuses in particular on families with limited financial resources as they commonly face multiple barriers to healthy eating such as costs, time constraints or low confidence in food preparation skills.
Anticipated or actual outputs
By promoting healthy eating habits and sharing advice on how particular foods benefit mental wellbeing, our project fits well with the long-term government agenda of health promotion and prevention of diet-related ill health. We hope to encourage further community-based cooking initiatives by highlight their public health value and showcasing their positive social and economic impact.
Who is involved?
- Emilia Tylenda, Project Lead, University of Hertfordshire
- Claire Thompson, University of Hertfordshire
- Angela Dickinson, University of Hertfordshire
Contact
Emilia Tylenda, e.tylenda@herts.ac.uk
