Back to results

Co-creation of a cookery book – pathways to making changes in diet

Personalized nutrition is based on the idea that individualizing nutritional advice will be more effective than more generic approaches. Studies are showing successful outcomes by applying such methods. Our group has been involved in several human intervention studies where dietary advice is given to participants based on their individual needs. However, in our most recent intervention some participants found it difficult to come up with cooking ideas for certain aspects of the dietary advice given and highlighted a need for novel approaches to cookbooks. A study by Bord Bia revealed that Irish people are still only eating 3.9 portions of fruit and vegetables a day on average, less than the guidelines of up to 7 servings per day. One of the barriers to eating fresh fruit and vegetables identified was a lack of confidence in cooking and preparing food. Therefore, we propose to create a cookery book and host a series of cooking workshops with Airfield Estate to empower people to make dietary changes with a focus on vegetables. Furthermore, the cookery book will be co-created with public participation. It will contain seasonal recipes (5 per season), identifying which vegetables are in season, what proteins work best etc.
A series of workshops will be run in collaboration with Airfield Estate, their trained chef will teach the participants to prepare and cook the recipes in the cookbook. The workshops will be run for different groups (1) lower socioeconomic group (2) new parents (3) 25-35 year old’s. Each group will be taught the required skills to cook with confidence while learning about the nutritional aspects of the dish in a relaxed enjoyable manner tailored to their needs
Co-creating a cookbook and running bespoke cookery classes will empower the participants and their wider families to eat healthier and make long lasting changes.