An independent evaluation of Food for Life cook and eat courses, Shoreditch Trust

The cook and eat courses are run by the Food for Life Health and Wellbeing programme at Shoreditch Trust, a community organisation located in the London Borough of Hackney. The courses are mix funded by the local authority within their Community Kitchens programme, Hackney and City Wellbeing Network, Shoreditch Trust and private donations (McQuarrie). The research was commissioned by the Trust and was undertaken between May 2016 and April 2017 by researchers initially at the Centre for Social Justice and Change, School of Social Sciences, University of East London and towards the end of the study at the Mannheim Centre for Crime and Criminology, London School of Economics. Reviewed research studies provide strong evidence to support the idea of introducing community-based ‘cook and eat’ initiatives particularly in disadvantaged areas and in Caribbean and South Asian communities where residents tend to have the least healthy diets. The research approach to evaluating cook and eat course is problems-based and realistic and draws on monitoring data, staff reports, self-completion questionnaires (40), in-depth interviews (8), and observations (2). Research participants include a wide range of participants with a bias towards those with more complex health and social problems. The study reviews the six week courses designed for adults run in five community kitchens on housing estates in Hackney and open to anyone in the community over the age of 18 years, and courses ran as part of the Wellbeing Network for people with mental health issues and held in the Healthy Living Centre owned by Shoreditch Trust.