How cooks navigate nutrition, hunger and care in public-sector foodservice settings

Abstract

Objective: To examine the perspectives and practices of cooks responsible for carrying out healthy meal programmes in publicly funded foodservice, in order to better understand what they consider to be 'good' food and where nutrition and nutritional standards fit into this conceptualization. Design: A qualitative, exploratory study involving in-depth interviews that were conducted with cooks and their supervisors about their work practices and perspectives on providing healthy food for clients. Setting: Participants were recruited from child-care, after-school, senior-centre and shelter settings that had participated in healthy menu training in New York City, USA. Subjects: Eighteen cooks and nine supervisors working in the aforementioned settings. Results: The views and practices of both cooks and supervisors about what constitutes 'good' food extend beyond a purely nutritional view of goodness to include the importance of addressing hunger and clients' food preferences, among other factors. Cooks address these by interacting with clients and altering recipes and menus in a range of ways to maximize the likelihood of food consumption and enjoyment. These approaches are often, but not always, compatible with setting-specific nutritional guidelines that may be set at the national, state, local or organizational level. Conclusions: Cooks play a key role in translating nutritional guidelines into what is served. In doing so, they engage in skilled labour and forms of care that increase the ability of public-sector foodservice to address food security and other goals, but these aspects of their work are not widely recognized.

How institutional food services can contribute to sustainable agrifood systems? Investigating legume-serving, legume-cooking and legume-sourcing through France in 2019

“…Moreover, canteens adapt their meals to their guests' characteristics and expectations. Tsui and Morillo (2016) argued that cooks (or kitchen supervisors) are central actors in the management of all these dimensions that impact the composition of meals; 4 they underlined that, beyond dietary guidelines, cooks take into account consumers' varying preferences in order to maximise "food consumption and enjoyment". Which means that if consumers themselves do not recognise the values in eating legumes, cooks will lack motivation in proposing legumes on a regular basis; and also, cooks' skills will be determinant in managing to produce tasty-enough meals with legumes to increase legume popularity.…”

“…Secondly, we addressed the survey to IFS kitchens (production sites) between April and August 2019, through Lime Survey online application. As underlined by Tsui and Morillo (2016), cooks (but also kitchen managers or purchasing and nutrition managers) are recognised to have a major role in the IFS sector, and we considered them as relevant information providers.…”

How a Transformation towards Sustainable Community Catering Can Succeed

“…Good staff training is a key factor for the desired transformation [40]. According to Tsui and Morillo, cooks are playing a central role in translating nutritional guidelines like recommendations for lower meat consumption in tasty and well-accepted recipes [41]. It should also be noted that different menu lines have to be developed for different target groups (seniors, toddlers, young people), which consider the taste preferences of the respective target group.…”

Development of a HACCP-based approach to control risk factors associated with biscuit manufacturing plant, Bangladesh

“…Critical limit was necessary for processing requirement in every control points (Table II). HACCP system was applied in this study for ensuring safe biscuit product for the consumer (Tsui and Morillo, 2016). To prevent the hazard that may create health hazard to the consumer, operators must have proper training on safe food handling practices throughout the production process as well as good food hygiene knowledge (Codex, 2009).…”