Create Our Own Kai: An intensive cooking class for healthy adolescents

For the first part of the intervention participants will attend informal, interactive cooking classes for five consecutive days. during January 2017. Each of the five days classes will last approximately seven hours and will run from Monday to Friday. Participants will learn how to cook ten meals, in groups of two, and we will provide all the food for them to do this. These classes are especially designed for adolescents and to be fun. They will be led by a trained chef and dietitian who have previously developed this prorgam and ran it successfully in South Australian schools. There will be input from local role models. Participants will also be able to ask any questions they have about food and health. We will also ask them to fill in a questionnaire about food and cooking and things related to this (e.g. physical activity, food choice) and measure their height and weight. On the last day of the classes they will cook a meal for their family, who will be invited to join the class to eat this, and to take part in another cooking and information session. At this last session, which will take part on the Friday aftternoon, the child's parent(s)/guardian(s) will be invited to attend, participants and their parents/guardians will eat together and the food served wil be that cooked by the participants that day.. This will be in an informal setting where the two people leading the cooking class (a chef and a dietitian) will talk briefly about the foods used in the recipes, plus other healthy ingredients that can be used as substitutions. Parents and children will be encouraged to ask any questions that they like about the recipes or food and nutrition in general so this session so this will be led by them, rather than the research team. Classes will take part in the University of Otago College of Education Food Technology suite, or a similar venue. There will be a register of attendance at the classes. For the second part of the study we will give each participant food to cook at least one family meal per week for the next six weeks. We will post new recipes and competitions on a Facebook page and we will have a weekly prize draw for those who post pictures of the meals that they cook, or who take part in the competitions. At the end of the six weeks we will ask participants to fill in a questionnaire about food and cooking, and measure their height and weight. For the third part of the study we will gradually decrease researcher participation on the Facebook page over the course of the year. Participation on the Facebook pages will be monitored. One year follow-up (funding permitting): Participants will complete the questionnaires and be weighed and measured at one year.