Increasing cooking and nutritional skills
Action 8: Encourage initiatives which improve nutrition and cooking skills
Building nutrition and cooking skills will improve cooking confidence and help improve diets. Skills can be developed through cookery courses, mentoring or sharing information via social media. A focus should also be made to ensure that future generations have strong cooking skills through ensuring that local schools are prioritising the delivery of the curriculum in these areas. Information could include:
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Meal planning and shopping on a budget. How to ensure a healthy diet on even the smallest of shopping budgets
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Nutritional knowledge and promotion of the Eat well guide to encourage people to eat a healthy diet
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Cooking confidence to encourage people to cook healthily from scratch with cheaper ingredients
Eatwell
When incomes are squeezed, food is often the only part of a household budget which can be cut. Families on extremely low food budgets tend to focus on foods which are filling, rather than foods which have optimum health benefits.
The UK government recommends that we all plan our meals using the nutritional advice in the Eatwell Guide. Research suggests that this costs £41.93 per person per week. Households living on low incomes will spend significantly less.
Cooking and Nutrition
A number of organisations run courses aimed at improving cooking and nutrition skills across Shropshire. We encourage the development of more cooking courses to boost cooking confidence and nutritional knowledge. Schools also have an important role to play in ensuring that children learn key skills surrounding nutrition and cooking.
Obesity
70.3% of adults in Shropshire are overweight or obese. Poverty and Obesity often go hand in hand. With poor diets impacting on health. The cost to the NHS of diet related ill health has been estimated at £6 billion per year.
