Nutritional and Culinary Habits to Empower Families Towards Sustainability - a Multicentric Pilot Study

Background: Different studies have shown that nutritional interventions can be effective in informing and educating the population about the need to follow a healthy diet to prevent obesity and other chronic diseases. However, sometimes this knowledge is difficult to apply in daily life, which is usually marked by lack of time and easy access to food alternatives that are not healthy but can be more comfortable. These difficulties may be greater in families today since the lack of time is greater and it is a greater challenge to get minors to consume a high amount (5 servings a day) of fruits and vegetables. Culinary medicine is an emerging discipline that combines nutrition and gastronomy to increase the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. Objective: The main objective is to demonstrate whether a culinary-nutritional intervention in families reduces the risk of obesity and increases adherence to a healthy and sustainable diet. Methods: The present project will cover culinary medicine and home-cooking as innovative strategies to improve the eating habits of families through an intervention based on face-to-face nutricional-culinary workshops and online material, where apart from receiving nutritional education, they will be taught a series of culinary techniques (adapted to adults and children) so that they learn to cook in an easy, enjoyable and family-friendly way, with tools to eat healthier in a simple and quick way. The intervention will be carried out with 92 families (dyads 1 adult and 1 child) which will be randomized in a 1: 1: 2 ratio into three groups: group 1 (intervention with families) in which families will attend nutritional-culinary workshops with theoretical and practical information to follow a sustainable Mediterranean diet; group 2 (intervention with parents) in which only parents will attend nutritional-culinary workshops with theoretical and practical information to follow a sustainable Mediterranean diet; and group 3 (control) in