The art of cooking

One of the hardest things for people to do is permanently change their dietary habits. Let’s face it, our personal food preferences have developed over decades, and have been heavily influenced by our parents and other family members, ethnic background, religion, wealth, access to food, physical activities, etc…This is why “going on a diet” generally doesn’t work for most people for very long.

One potential solution to this is too improve the overall quality of your diet by improving the ingredients used, and changing the proportions of foods and drinks consumed. That way you aren’t changing your diet dramatically – just making step-wise improvements. For most people, this prevents the “new” diet from being too disruptive to your existing lifestyle, and it also means that it is usually affordable.

Improving the quality of your diet is much harder than it sounds, of course. A family’s favourite recipes have been developed over many years – sometimes generations – and the amounts, taste and texture are all important considerations.

University food and nutrition courses typically cover the science of food relatively well – depending on the University’s facilities. The art of food is generally not well covered, however. Hence, in 2016, I decided to commence a Certificate III in Commercial Cookery at Ryde TAFE and completed the course in June 2018. I very much enjoyed the journey.