Perceptions of Brazilian young adults about cooking

Abstract

Introduction: Cooking at home is conducive to better diet quality and can help improve health. Nevertheless, the reduced transmission of culinary knowledge and skills worldwide hinders young adults’ confidence and autonomy to prepare meals. To inform the development of initiatives that support young adults to overcome barriers to cook and improve their diet quality, it is important to investigate the process of culinary socialization in the context of their own life course. Objective: This qualitative study aimed to explore how young adults who cook perceive their involvement with this practice and to identify which culinary socializing agents were part of their learning process. Method: Open interviews based on the life-course perspective approach were conducted with male and female Brazilian young adults aged 19-24 years-old and thematically analysed. Results: Perceptions about cooking and about learning how to cook led to the creation of six themes: (1) “Caring about myself”; (2) “(Un)pleasant feelings”; (3) “Promoting conviviality”; (4) “Worrying about outcomes”; (5) “Skills needed”; and (6) “Socializing agents”. Conclusions: Initiatives to enable young adults overcoming barriers to cook and potentially improve their diet quality need to focus not only on practical cooking skills development, but also on planning. Also important is to foster positive messages involving self-care, pleasure, and conviviality. Ways of using the internet and social media to engage this population to cook more deserves to be further explored.

Keywords

• food preparation. culinary socialization. socializing agent. interview. internet.