should children learn to cook at school?

Children must be able to cook at least ten healthy, cheap and tasty dishes by the time they finish school. That is at least the opinion of Mary Berry, a British cookbook writer. TV chef Jamie Oliver also advocates food education for school children. I wonder how you think about that. Do children have to learn how to cook at primary school?

Better eating habits

Learning to cook at a young age can have a positive influence on eating habits in later life. By helping to prepare or cooking by yourself, children learn more about nutrition and healthy eating. Cooking is also important for the development of taste: it appears that children who helped with cooking also taste it faster. That can prevent the occurrence of a troublesome eater.

In addition, children can prepare a healthy meal on the table by learning to cook at a later age. If children learn to cook when they go to rooms, the chances are that their cooking skills will consist of preparing packages and bags, or that they will be great friends with the meal deliverers.

Cooking at a young age has several advantages

In addition to better eating habits, learning to cook for children has more benefits. Think for example of a motor and physical development. By rolling, kneading and stirring the food, the children work on their fine motor skills and dexterity. But also cognitive learning cookery has several advantages.

By working with a recipe, learning to read, understand and apply instructions and directions and counting with different sizes and units, children gain a lot of knowledge. So also useful for math skills!

In addition, cooking together is also a social activity where children learn to collaborate and develop emotionally. Not only because their self-confidence grows with getting compliments such as 'what does it smell good', or 'what does it taste good', but also by learning to deal with disappointments. If a recipe fails and the potatoes burn, what do you do?

Why would not you do it?

And why should cooking lessons not be included in primary education? In addition to learning basic skills such as math and reading, it is extremely important that they learn to prepare their own (healthy) meal? And not only that, learning to cook has so many additional benefits.