Cooking competence of white young adults residing in Tshwane, South Africa

Abstract

A decline in cooking competence has become a global concern. Contributing factors include the decrease in cooking competence learning in education institutions, the change in lifestyle and societal norms and the ever-increasing time deficit crisis, which consequently gave rise to the consumption of Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs), donating to the global obesity epidemic. For this qualitative study, a conceptual framework concerning cooking competence was developed. The conceptual framework guided this study into exploring and describing young couples' cooking knowledge and skills according to their cooking competence dimensions. An Ethnographical strategy of enquiry was used, and the data was gathered through visual ethnography. The key findings revealed a depreciation of cooking competence-related subjects, a change in lifestyle and societal norms and that intergenerational transmission of cooking competence still exists. The time deficit crisis was a significant factor influencing participants cooking competence. Participants were high consumers of UPFs, which can be linked to the decline in cooking competence. Each participant had a unique set of cooking competencies, their cooking knowledge and skills were interrelated and interdependent, and cooking competence was found to contributes to an individual’s food literacy. An adapted cooking competence dimensions table was developed and a new conceptual framework was proposed.