Cooking crisis: What crisis?

Cooking has long been a topic of discussion and concern among those arguing for a healthy diet. Chadwick, the great public health reformer, in 1842 called for cooking education. The Obama administration has heartedly endorsed cooking, mainly through the First Lady and a program called Cooking Matters, to address the obesity problem in the United States (http://cookingmatters.org/). Changing practices in cooking and food preparation and the way we eat some argue are driven by a loss of skills. Others argue that there is not a loss of skills but a changing set of skills driven by the changing nature of food provision and demands on our time. Our research in 1999 showed the United Kingdom population with low levels of skills, with the rich having higher levels of a skills deficit