There are many good reasons to teach your children to cook and it’s a skill that for a generation or two was sadly lacking and, thankfully, is starting to show a real resurgence for many reasons. The quality and price of processed foods, for one. 

It’s A Wonderful Time To Spend With Your Children

Even if the kids are young and not able to do much more than stirring a pot or fetching ingredients from the cupboard, it can be a great bonding time with the little ones and gets them realizing that food doesn’t just appear and has to be provided for them in one way or another.

It Teaches Them About Weights & Measures

It can be a great way of making them realize how important learning about weighing and measuring can be for them as a life skill. Even things like converting from imperial to metric when using older recipes can give a good opportunity for learning.

They Will Learn To Be Independent

This gives them skills to be living independently once they get to the age of leaving home to go off and study or get a job and move out. We all know how awful a typical student’s diet can be and if they can even follow easy student recipes, like these, then they will be eating much better than their contemporaries.

Healthy Eating Can Be Understood & Achieved

There is a huge problem in the Western world with childhood obesity and various associated issues such as diabetes which are entirely preventable, so healthy food and snacks are great. If you are getting your children to make their own food then they will see what ingredients are going and you can use this to educate them about recommended levels of things like sugar and salt and even compare the recipe to store-bought alternatives so that they can see how many unnecessary additives can be in some pre-made meals and snacks.

You Can Learn About Other Cultures

You can use it as an opportunity to educate them about different cultures, nations and even regional agriculture around the world. These days many cookbooks have sections about the history and culture of the food that is contained within its pages. It can teach children about how the global food economy works and even a useful tool to educate about carbon emissions on things like air-miles and the benefit of buying locally produced fare which is naturally in season.

It’s A Money Saver
It’s amazing how much of a money saver preparing food from scratch can be for you and especially if you happen to have a large family. Batch cooking can be really good and if you have a large enough freezer then why not cook a bunch of meals at the weekend and defrost them as the week goes on, this saves time and stress and ensures healthy eating even when you come in from work after a long, hard days work.