Teaching practical skills - Cook your way to healthier life

IT is an irony of our time that just as food has assumed five-star celebrity status in the world of entertainment, far too many people view the prospect of turning a slipper of bacon, and a head of Savoy cabbage, into a dinner much as the Spartans viewed the Persian armies advancing on the Pass of Thermopylae in 480BC.

The Spartans resisted unequal odds, but those odds pale into insignificance compared to the cultural battle needed to convince people of the value of preparing real, nutritious — and good-value — food for children, especially those susceptible to obesity.

Chef Nevin Maguire has joined the fray and suggested that cooking lessons be mandatory for secondary school pupils. He argues that cooking should be just one of the practical life skills in school curriculums. It is hard to disagree, even in a period of growing time-poverty.