Exploring and promoting home-produced foods : piloting a community kitchen intervention

Abstract

Locally, various studies about the preparation of family meals within different families have been conducted; however, a gap in knowledge was evident regarding the preparation of home-produced foods. This study aimed to reveal the current local situation of home-produced meals in the preparation of family meals among families with working parents of young children through a baseline study consisting of a survey by questionnaire. Subsequently, based on the results, an intervention based on the concept of Community Kitchens (CKs) was developed. This second phase of the study consisted in three main stages. Firstly, two focus group interviews were conducted among two groups of working parents. Apart from providing vital information for tailoring the intervention, results acquired helped the researcher to divide the participants in two main groups according to the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), namely Contemplation and Action stages. Two different 5-week cooking courses were implemented aimed to equip each target group with the required knowledge, skills and self-efficacy to prepare sustainable home-produced meals for their family. The pilot-study was also evaluated to assess the effectiveness of the course and the impact on the participants. Results revealed that parents’ participation in the labour force does not influence the extent to which home-produced food is being served at table. Taking a look at the barriers, time-factor dominates, even if meal providers do not manage to identify it due to various coping-strategies adopted naturally by them. Very often they tend to rely on convenience food, although highly processed ones do not seem to be among the most favoured. Meal providers, especially those with lower self-efficacy, are mostly dependent on family members’ reactions to home cooked dishes. Hence, their continuous resistance towards newly tried recipes and inclusion of innovative ingredients demotivates meal preparers drastically, leading to less home-produced meals and being less creative in cooking. This research confirmed that being knowledgeable about food is positively linked to more responsibilities in the production of food at household level, more use of home-grown food, more experimenting in the kitchen, less use of convenience food, wider repertoire of recipes, modification of recipes, healthier cooking methods, and, consequently, healthier family meals.