Nutritional and Culinary Habits to Empower Families - A Feasibility Study

Nutritional and Culinary Habits to Empower Families (n-CHEF) - A Feasibility Study

Background: Currently, one of the health challenges in the field of public health is to improve the quality of life of people with metabolic diseases, using new strategies to promote eating habits and lifestyle that allow an active involvement in health.

Within the new strategies to promote an improvement in the eating habits of the population, culinary-nutritional interventions based on culinary medicine or strategies such as home-cooking, have been proposed as effective measures for the implementation of healthy eating habits in the population. Intervention with families (the environment in which the eating habits of children are implemented for the future) should be highlighted.

Methods: The present project will cover culinary medicine and home-cooking as innovative strategies to improve the eating habits of families through an intervention based on face-to-face (2) and online (2) cooking workshops, where apart from receiving nutritional education, they will be taught a series of culinary techniques (adapted to adults and children) so that they learn to cook in an easy, enjoyable and family-friendly way, with tools to eat healthier in a simple and quick way.

The main objective is to evaluate the feasibility of the culinary-nutritional intervention. The intervention will be carried out with 15 families (one of the parents and one of the children of the family aged between 10 and 14 years), through the measurement of anthropometric parameters and questionnaires on eating habits and lifestyles (both individual and family). In addition, questionnaires specific to the research will be collected in order to study the feasibility of the intervention.

The study population is 15 families. The main inclusion criterion is that in the family there is a minor between 10 and 14 years of age. As this is a feasibility study, children will be healthy, although they may be overweight, but not following any special diet.

Inclusion criteria :

• Families in which at least one parent commits to attend all information-gathering visits and culinary-nutritional workshops.
• Families in which the child who commits to attend the information gathering visits and culinary-nutritional workshops is between 10 and 14 years old.
• Families in which the parent and the child eat food prepared at home at least 5 days a week.
• Families that assume the cost of food purchases for the workshops.

Exclusion criteria:

• Families in which children and/or parents eat 5 days a week food not prepared at home.
• Families in which any member of the family has allergies (nuts, fruits, cow protein...) or food intolerances (dairy, gluten...) that prevent them from following the culinary-nutritional intervention.
• Families that follow a specific dietary pattern that makes the intervention impossible (weight loss diet, vegetarian or vegan diet, etc.).
• Families in which some members have chronic diseases such as type 1 diabetes, morbid obesity, type 2 diabetes, etc.
• Families in which one of the parents is involved in cooking and/or nutrition or one of the parents and/or children have attended a previous cooking course.
• Families in which any member has eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia nervosa).
• Families in which any member has severe digestive tract diseases, kidney disease, cancer, and other diseases that limit survival to 1 year.
• Families in which a member presents some type of cognitive and/or psychic impairment, Alzheimer's disease, depressive pathology, etc.
• Families in which poor collaboration is foreseen or that, in the opinion of the researcher, any of the members have difficulties in following the study procedures.
• Families in which a lack of commitment (in the researcher's opinion) to the intervention, suspicion of non-compliance, or real difficulties in following the development of the study are detected.