Guidelines for designing age-appropriate cooking interventions for children: the development of evidence-based cooking skill recommendations for children, using a multidisciplinary approach

Cooking interventions have been criticised for their weak designs and ‘kitchen sink’ approach to content development. Currently, there is no scientific guidance for the inclusion of specific skills in children’s cooking interventions. Therefore, a four step method was used to develop age-appropriate cooking skill recommendations based on relevant developmental motor skills. The steps include: 1) a critical review of academic and publically available sources of children’s cooking skills recommendations; 2) cooking skill selection, deconstruction and mapping to relevant motor skills; 3) grouping the cooking skills by underlying motor skills for age appropriateness to generate evidence based recommendations; 4) establish face validity using a two-stage expert review, critique and refinement with a multidisciplinary international team. Seventeen available sources of cooking skills recommendations were identified, critiqued and deconstructed and cooking skills mapped to developmental motor skills. These new recommendations consist of 32 skills, across five age categories: 2 – 3 years, 3 – 5 years, 5 – 7 years, 7 – 9 years, and 9+ years. The proposed recommendations will strengthen programme design by providing guidance for content development targeted at the correct age groups and can act as a guide to parents when including their children in cooking activities at home.