Let's talk about chefs, baby: Comparing three types of home cooks on recipe use before and during COVID-19

Not everyone comes to the kitchen equally equipped and, as such, does not have the same opportunities for gaining cooking skills, resulting in different taste standards and less healthy food intake. This paper aimed to cluster home cooks based on their ‘cooking capital', consisting of their incorporated capital (self-reported cooking skills, attitudes, behaviors) and objectivized capital (access to cooking means), and investigate the differences in food-related preferences and behaviors. In total, 19.378 home cooks, older than 26 and living in one of the 38 participating countries, completed an online survey. Two-step clustering was used to create clusters that were then compared on recipe use, bread baking at home, and food intake, both before and during COVID-19. Three segments emerged: low-priority cooks (lowest cooking capital), everyday cooks (middle bracket), and hobby chefs (highest cooking capital). Clusters differed significantly regarding recipe sources, valued recipe aspects, and food intake. Hobby chefs appraised high-capital aspects more (taste, healthiness, sustainability) and reported overall healthier diets. Practical elements (ease, preparation time) were valued highest by low-priority and everyday cooks. During COVID-19, all segments used all recipe sources less frequently;practical ingredient-related variables, tastiness, innovativeness, and health increased in importance for all. Some gaps between clusters on practical and high-capital recipe preferences grew smaller during the pandemic. Implications are made for a segmented communication approach adapted to each cluster of home cooks rather than focusing on upper classes with higher levels of cooking capital. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Less food wasted? Changes to new zealanders’ household food waste and related behaviours due to the 2020 covid-19 lockdown

Food waste is a crisis of our time, yet it remains a data gap in Aotearoa New Zealand’s (NZ’s) environmental reporting. This research contributes to threshold values on NZ’s food waste and seeks to understand the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown on household food waste in NZ. The data presented here form part of the ‘Covid Kai Survey’, an online questionnaire that assessed cooking and food planning behaviours during the 2020 lockdown and retrospectively before lockdown. Of the 3028 respondents, 62.5% threw out food ‘never’/‘rarely’ before lockdown, and this number increased to 79.0% during lockdown. Participants who wasted food less frequently during lockdown were more likely to be older, work less than full-time, and have no children. During lockdown, 30% and 29% of those who ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’ struggled to have money for food threw out food ‘sometimes or more’;compared with 20% of those who rarely struggled to have money for food (p < 0.001). We found that lower levels of food waste correlated with higher levels of cooking confidence (p < 0.001), perceived time (p < 0.001), and meal planning behaviours (p < 0.001). Understanding why food waste was generally considerably lower during lockdown may inform future initiatives to reduce food waste, considering socio-economic and demographic disparities. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.