I am a firm believer that every single person should know how to cook — man or woman, tall or short, Black or white, smart or dumb. By the time you hit young adulthood, you should be able to keep yourself fed with your own two hands.
Whenever I hear about some 18-year-old who went off to college and almost died of malnutrition, I am perplexed. Having basic food skills is important. Having basic food skills will keep you from developing scurvy in the 21st century.
That’s not a joke. According to a 2020 study out of McMaster University, scurvy is still very much present in Canada. Fifty-two people in two Hamilton hospital systems over nine years had low vitamin C levels, and 13 had diagnosable scurvy even though it takes very little vitamin C to prevent the disease.
So to prevent our youth from developing the pirate disease, I beg people to make learning food skills a necessity.
A study from Health Canada regarding food skills defines them as a “complex, interrelated, person-centered set of skills that are necessary to provide and prepare safe, nutritious, and culturally-appropriate meals for all members of one’s household.”
So for me, a 21-year-old living in a mixed-race home with four family members in Mississauga, the food skills I require to satisfy Health Canada involve me being able to cook chicken adobo and Spargel for five people. Not to toot my own horn, but I can certainly do that.
Here’s me being very proud of my dinner party spread:
For a 30-year-old vegetarian living alone in Vancouver, their food skills may only need to cover making grilled cheese with tomato soup. Which is a major improvement from eating ramen noodles or ordering takeout for every meal.
The point is food skills—or being able to cook—won’t mean the same thing for everyone.
If I look retrospectively at my life and how I came to develop my own food skills, I can pinpoint the moments that taught me how to cook. Throughout my life, my mom always wanted help in the kitchen. Even if it pushed back dinner time, if my siblings or I wanted to “help,” we would be encouraged to.
It started with small tasks or busy work, and before I knew it, I could cook. “Peel that potato” and “chop that onion” turned into “Can you cook tonight?”
There are a couple of things to take away from this. The first is that my mom was the one in the kitchen encouraging little helpers, not my dad. Not that he would develop scurvy if left to his own devices, but he definitely didn’t share equal kitchen responsibility. And I won’t lie, my sister and I have much better food skills than my brother does. Here is my sister, clearly an expert chef from a young age.
This came up in the Health Canada study too. Men were less likely to report that they prepare most meals in the household at 19% compared to women at 64%.
I am not majorly shocked by this. I don’t think anyone is. Throughout history, women have been the homemakers, child-rearers and cooks of the household. While the men were at work, women did the housework.
According to a study by Catalyst, Canadian women 15 years and older represented nearly half (47.4%) of the labour force in 2019.
So if just as many women are working, shouldn’t just as many men be houseworking?
I suppose this gender divide with cooking comes down to hobbies in my household. Sure, my mom, sister and I do all of the cooking. But we like to do it, and we like to do it together. I have full faith that if women were instantly and tragically wiped off the face of the planet, my brother and dad would be just fine. I certainly can’t say the same for other men.
The second takeaway from my mom’s success in turning me into a good cook is that introducing food skills from a young age is essential. Like riding a bike, swimming or walking, the things we learn to do as kids stick with us for life.
The Health Canada study focuses majorly on child involvement in the kitchen. It says, “There is evidence supporting the association between preparing food and the food choices of children and adolescents.” Put plainly, if you don’t encourage your kid to help out in the kitchen, they are destined for a life of ramen noodles and delivery. I am not as pessimistic.
I know for some, this isn’t as straightforward as me sloppily peeling a carrot as an 8-year-old. My family had the time, the resources and the patience for me to take as long as I needed to learn to peel a carrot. Heck, if I had accidentally dropped one on the floor, that would have been fine too. I probably did, and my mom probably rinsed it off and handed it back to me.
So, what about the single parent who only has ten minutes to put dinner on the table? Well, to my surprise, Health Canada says households with one adult were more likely to report that children make suggestions for family meals than households with more than one adult.
In a beautiful article from Vice, people raised by single moms write about what having a home-cooked meal meant to them. The underlying message throughout every story was that whether dinner was burgers from frozen or sausage and veg, the thing that stuck with them was the importance of getting a cooked meal on the table together. Even with a million things on the go and no time to breathe, these moms instilled food skills, whether they intended to or not.
I think this goes back to the definition of food skills being complex and person centered. You should cook in a way that works for you. I don’t think saying “every single person should know how to cook” is asking for too much.
If you’re a parent of an 18-year-old boy who doesn’t know how to turn the stove on, it’s time for a cooking lesson. And if you are the 18-year-old boy, Google a recipe and get started. Trust me; it isn’t that hard.