Feasibility of a dietary life skills course aimed at fostering cooking skills and a healthy diet among university students.

Background: The transition from living at home to independent university life has been associated with deteriorated health outcomes, and many university students lack cooking skills. Life skills education promotes skills essential to mastering everyday challenges such as planning and preparing healthy meals. We developed a dietary life skills course to foster cooking skills and a healthy diet among university students. This paper describes the feasibility testing of this Skills for Life course.

Methods: Skills for Life was feasibility tested as a pre-post intervention without a control group. The course comprised 10 weekly, practical lessons at a university teaching kitchen. Topics included among others: nutrition from a life course perspective and why diet matters, how to stock your kitchen, how to make the most of your student loan, and sustainable food and 'food rescuing'. The emphasis was on how to plan and cook easy, cheap, healthy, tasty, and sustainable meals. The students were encouraged to engage with a course-specific website that included short video lectures, relevant literature, learning activities, recipes, and a podcast. An online survey including background information and a validated dietary screener (MyFoodMonth 1.1) was distributed pre- and post-course. Feasibility questionnaires were distributed after each of the 10 lessons and post-course. Progression criteria were set regarding acceptability (mean value ≥ 4 of 5), demand (30 or more sign up; 20 or more participate), implementation (10 lessons delivered), practicality (intervention delivered within normal working hours) and limited efficacy (no significant adverse effects on participants).

Results: All progression criteria were met. Sixty-nine students signed up, but the dropout rate was substantial. Twenty-eight students attended at least one lesson, and 14 students attended at least five of the 10 lessons. The overall attendance rate was 49%. The course was well received by the students and was assessed as acceptable. Self-perceived course effects such as a healthier diet, increased knowledge of a healthy diet, and improved cooking skills were reported.

Conclusions: The Skills for Life course is feasible in a university setting. Further research should investigate how to increase participation to be able to explore possible changes in diet quality in a larger sample.