Food Literacy and Cooking Skills Tool
This project is developing an evaluation tool for assessing the nutritional and cooking skills of young adults in Switzerland. It lays the foundation for effective cooking interventions and healthy daily food culture.
Factsheet
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Schools involved
School of Health Professions
School of Social Work - Institute(s) Nutrition and Dietetics
- Strategic thematic field Thematic field "Caring Society"
- Funding organisation BFH
- Duration (planned) 01.01.2026 - 31.12.2026
- Head of project Dr. Joyce Haddad
Situation
Young adulthood is a critical life stage where long-term eating and lifestyle habits are formed. In Switzerland, young adults consume the highest proportion of ultra-processed foods and increasingly live in single-person with limited time, space, and resources for cooking. At the same time, societal norms, digital influences, and economic pressures make convenience foods more accessible and socially accepted. Fresh, home-prepared meals are often perceived as costly or time-consuming. Young adults are largely underrepresented in nutrition research, and there is a lack of a culturally appropriate approach that comprehensively assesses their skills and lifestyle habits. This project addresses this gap by developing and adapting measurement tools specifically for Swiss young adults. This strengthens ‘culinary nutrition’ – the combination of cooking and nutritional knowledge. Through participatory co-design, we ensure that the tools reflect diverse living conditions, social backgrounds, and everyday realities. The resulting instruments will provide the methodological foundation for future culinary nutrition interventions, enabling rigorous evaluation of food literacy and cooking skills. This strengthens culinary nutrition as a strategy to improve diet quality, and to enhance social connection through shared cooking and eating practices.
Course of action
For the development of the tool, we will use a participatory, multi-stage approach. First, a literature review will identify and synthesise existing tools on the topics of nutrition and food literacy as well as cooking skills. In co-design workshops with young adults from Switzerland (18–30 years old), nutritionists, cooks and experts from the fields of social sciences and lifestyle interventions, culturally relevant instruments are then developed. Concepts such as the Cook-ED-Matrix™ and the Behaviour Change Wheel model serve as orientation. Through the participatory approach, we ensure that the tools reflect different living conditions, social backgrounds and everyday realities. In a third step, the tools will be made accessible digitally and tested in a pilot phase with a group of 20 to 50 young adults in order to test them for comprehensibility, practicality and acceptance. Finally, the tools are finalised based on the findings and integrated into an evaluation concept that forms the basis for a subsequent cooking intervention with young adults.
