Can the development of cooking skills influence nutritional status and diet? A systematic review

Cooking skills are defined as the individual knowledge, confidence, and attitude necessary to perform culinary tasks.. Despite the growing number of primary studies investigating culinary skills and dietary outcomes, there remains a significant gap in systematic reviews synthesizing the evidence regarding their impact on the nutritional status and diet of healthy adults. The aim of this systematic review was to assess whether the development of culinary skills influences nutritional status and diet. A systematic search of studies was conducted in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, and SciELO. The methodological quality of the studies was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias in Non-randomized Studies of Interventions (ROBINS-I) tool for non-randomized intervention studies and the Cochrane Risk of Bias for Randomized Studies (RoB 2) tool for randomized intervention studies. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology was used to assess the quality of the evidence. Fifteen studies were included, most of which were classified as having a serious risk of methodological bias, such as the absence of randomization of participants and control groups. The results highlighted the importance of cooking skills and increased cooking frequency in improving diet quality among adults. However, no evidence of an association with nutritional status was found. Thus, this systematic review suggests that the development of cooking skills in healthy adults is associated with improvements in selected self-reported dietary behaviors, especially fruit and vegetable intake and cooking confidence, but the certainty of evidence is low or very low, and no reliable conclusion can be drawn regarding nutritional status. Further clinical trials are needed to strengthen the evidence base.