Cooking

Cooking is the practice of preparing food for consumption.

It is  integrated with other practices, such as shopping, eating and domestic waste management.

​Cooking can take many forms. Each has implications for the skills, materials and meanings associated with the practice.

It can include preparing meals, such as for breakfast or dinner, inside the home as well as making lunch for consuming outside the home.

It can be a quick meal during the working week, the preparation of multiple meals on a weekend or a dinner with family and friends.

Cooking also takes different forms depending upon the composition of the household, such as young families, professional couples, single people, multi-generational families or pensioners.

Cooking directly drives the form of consumption practices, particularly shopping (it can also be influenced by shopping practices, such as impulse purchases which then drive meal decisions) and the production and management of food waste. Indirectly, it can influence transport practices through shopping (e.g. having to carry heavy groceries).​

Materials
The materials involved in cooking include appliances, such as conventional and microwave ovens, stovetops and barbecues. ​Each of these rely on different energy sources for their operations, such gas, electricity and wood and charcoal.

Cooking is responsible for 4% of national household gas use. Shifting away from gas to electricity supplied from renewable sources has the potential to reduce emissions.

Cooking is also influenced by other appliances in the home such as refrigerators and freezers.

Skills
​The ability to cook (and to cook different types of food) varies between households.

This includes operating appliances as well as following recipes and understanding how meals are prepared.

​Factors such as available household income influence the types of food purchased, and thus the skills required to cook.

Meanings
​Cooking food carries a host of meanings including time pressures, family structure, food cultures, health considerations and environmental and ethical concerns.

​The degree of influence of each of these meanings must be considered when designing interventions (e.g. family cooking often carries meanings focused on the wellbeing of the family, which are likely to outweigh social and ethical concerns).

Suggested Practice Changes

• replace gas-fired stovetops with induction heating
• learn cooking techniques to support primarily plant-based diet
• review integration with related practices (e.g. shopping)​

Essential Reading

Hargreaves, T., 2011. Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change. Journal of consumer culture, 11(1), pp.79-99.

Shove, E., 2010. Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change. Environment and planning A, 42(6), pp.1273-1285.