ABSTRACT
Food and Cooking Skills Education (FCSE) has contributed and continues to contribute its own complex debates to food policy within a general consensus that cooking education of some sort is important. The seventeen rationales that were proposed for FCSE indicate that the perception and definitions of skills have become broader in scope; they have been influenced by economic and cultural conceptions of food. Variations in the mode, location and practitioner involved in the delivery of practical cookery skills lessons is as important as having the opportunity to access, view and practise them. In addition to practical cooking skills education, the contribution that FCSE makes to young people's knowledge and understanding of food hygiene and safety is significant and pertinent in the modern system of food choice and production. Teaching people how to cook is one of the means by which such information can be transmitted, but the evidence for this is minimal.
