From Skills to Wellbeing: How Culinary Nutrition Education Supports Mental Health Across the Lifespan

ABSTRACT: Culinary nutrition education (CNE) involves structured, experiential learning that combines cooking skills with nutrition knowledge. While traditionally evaluated for physical health and dietary outcomes, emerging evidence suggests that CNE may also confer psychosocial benefits, such as improvements in self-efficacy, social connectedness, mood, and quality of life. This perspective (1) discusses the latest evidence for the psychosocial impact of CNE across developmental stages, (2) articulates plausible psychosocial mechanisms, (3) highlights limitations in current research, and (4) proposes directions for future research, intervention design, and implementation. Overall, evidence points to potential psychosocial benefits across the lifespan, although current research quality is variable. This perspective suggests that CNE, as an experiential learning approach, may support mental health by fostering self-efficacy building, promoting autonomous decision-making, enhancing social connection, and contributing to social identity formation across the lifespan. Integrating CNE into schools, communities, and other settings has the potential to deliver scalable, equitable psychosocial benefits. Future research should further examine effects over time, dose-response relationships, and the underlying psychosocial mechanisms. CNE interventions should be evidence-based, systematically co-designed with consumers, and tailored to participants’ developmental stage and needs to maximise their psychosocial benefits.