Healthy Cooking Project

About Improving Students’ Health Through Cooking Program

Poor lifestyle and dietary habits not only affect the physical health of schoolchildren, such as increasing the risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes in the future, but multiple systematic review studies have also pointed out a strong link between poor nutritional quality in diets and issues in adolescents’ learning and mental health, such as hyperactivity, depression, anxiety, and stress. Nowadays, general schoolchildren are overly focused on academics and obsessed with electronic devices and games. Coupled with overprotective parenting, these factors pose greater challenges to their health. Many parents, hoping their children will concentrate on their studies, reduce their involvement in household chores. This limits the development of life skills in children. When children lack cooking experience during their primary and secondary school years, they often opt for takeaway instead of cooking for themselves once they face more opportunities for independent living. Although eating out does not necessarily mean unhealthy, healthy takeaway options are very limited. High sodium content is almost unavoidable, and meals often lack sufficient fruits and vegetables. Long-term consumption of nutritionally imbalanced takeaway food can negatively impact university students’ physical and mental health, and this reliance on takeaway food may even continue after graduation, which is detrimental to long-term personal health. Currently, many school-based healthy eating promotion efforts are limited to increasing knowledge, which often fails to effectively arouse students’ interest and attention. Once environmental factors come into play, such as tempting food and snack advertisements or the sale of processed foods at school tuck shops, it becomes difficult for students to maintain healthy eating behaviors. This may even lead to the misconception that healthy food does not taste good. In light of this, and with funding support from the Quality Education Fund, our centre will implement the Improving Students’ Health Through Cooking Program during the 2025/26 and 2026/27 academic years. This initiative includes healthy cooking experiences for secondary school students and training for teachers. We hope to provide more opportunities for students to practice healthy eating and learn healthy cooking skills during or after class.

Program Objectives

1. Healthy Cooking Activities for Secondary Students: Through after-school interest groups and post-exam healthy snack-making activities, students will be taught healthy cooking skills to enhance their food literacy, self-perceived competency, and self-confidence.

2. Healthy Cooking Training for Teacher: Practical training and exchange sessions will be provided for teachers to equip them with healthy cooking techniques. This aims to promote healthy eating and support cooking education in schools in accordance with healthy dietary principles.

Program Targets

Healthy Cooking Activities for Secondary Students: Targeting altogether 10 secondary schools that do not offer Home Economics or Technology and Living.

Healthy Cooking Training for Teacher: Open to all teachers interested in learning more about healthy cooking principles and techniques. A total of 240 places will be available, with priority given to current teachers teaching Home Economics or Technology and Living.

Program Implementation Plan

The program will be carried out over two academic years, 2025/26 and 2026/27. It is divided into three main components, with the arrangements as follows:

After-school Interest Groups:Designed for junior and senior secondary students who currently do not have cooking classes but are interested in learning more about healthy cooking. Sessions will be held after school. Each group will consist of 7 sessions, and students who complete at least 5 sessions will receive a certificate of participation.

Post-exam Healthy Snack-making Activities:Tailored for secondary schools that currently offer neither Home Economics nor Technology and Living. Based on school preference, two sessions will be conducted for one grade level during the post-exam period.

Healthy Cooking Training for Teachers:To be conducted after school. Teachers who complete all 4 training sessions will receive a certificate of attendance.

Become A Participating School

Please contact Ms. Chung, the program coordinator at our centre, during August 2025 to learn more and sign up. As the number of places in this program is limited, if the quota for the first academic year is full, schools will be placed on a waiting list.

Roles of Participating Schools

Participating schools must appoint at least one teacher to coordinate the communication and implementation of the program. This teacher coordinator will be responsible for attending program meetings, assisting with the arrangement of surveys, recruiting students to join the healthy cooking interest groups, providing required coordination before the interest group sessions and post-exam activities, and offering feedback on the arrangements of program activities.