Are Cooking Interventions Effective at Improving Dietary Intake and Health Outcomes? A Systematic Review

Existing systematic reviews have suggested that cooking interventions can be beneficial for improving dietary intake and health outcomes, with research indicating that the ability to prepare meals at home may prove to be more complex, and involve influencing factors (i.e., cooking self-efficacy, food agency [i.e., one's ability to procure and prepare food with the considerations of their physical, social and economic environment], and nutritional literacy/knowledge) for improving health outcomes. With the average American's diet consisting of about 60% of total energy coming from the consumption of ultra-processed foods, interventions that target increasing cooking skills and the frequency of consuming home-cooked meals may help to reduce reliance on processed foods, improve dietary intake quality, and reduce risk of weight gain, obesity, and related conditions. To date, there are no systematic reviews that have addressed the impact of cooking interventions on processed or ultra-processed food consumption. Therefore, this research systematically reviewed the body of literature focused on cooking interventions and dietary intake including processed food consumption and evaluated intervention's effectiveness at improving dietary intake and physical and mental health outcomes. English and full-text research articles published through January 2021 were obtained through PubMed, CINAHL using EBSCO, Web of Science from Clarivate, Scopus and PsycInfo. Overall, 55 articles were obtained after meeting the inclusion criteria and going through the data extraction process. Outcomes of interests to measure included fruit and vegetable consumption, body mass index (BMI), body weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, physical activity, and if the study measured psychosocial outcomes or processed food consumption. Results indicate that when analyzing the effect sizes for studies that reported mean data for each group (eg, intervention and control/comparison groups), 86% of studies measuring fruit intake found a positive effect size (Average: Cohen's d: 0.65, 95% CI: 0.30, 0.99); 90% of studies measuring vegetable intake found a positive effect size (Average: Cohen's d: 0.80, 95% CI: 0.37, 1.09); 82% of studies measuring BMI found a negative effect size (Average: Cohen's d: -0.20, 95% CI: -0.58, 0.17); 100% of studies measuring body weight had a negative effect size (Average: Cohen's d: -0.27, 95% CI: -0.77, 0.23); and 100% of studies measuring waist circumference had a negative effect size (Cohen's d: -0.16, 95% CI: -0.60,0.24). This systematic review will provide information on recently published studies that were not incorporated in prior reviews that can be utilized in future interventions that aim to improve health outcomes and reduce processed food consumption.