Social representations of cooking and homemade meals

An in-depth understanding of people's experiences, beliefs and thoughts about cooking and homemade meals is essential for the design of a more effective discourse to encourage cooking from scratch. In this context, the objective of the present work was to explore the social representations of homemade meals and cooking. An online survey was conducted with 974 Uruguayan adults, recruited using an advertisement on Facebook. Participants were asked to write down the first words that came to their mind when thinking of homemade meals and cooking. Responses were coded into categories using inductive coding. The structure of the social representations was explored using the frequency of mention and rank of appearance of the categories. Results showed that the social representations of homemade meals were largely consensual among participants and mainly related to pleasure, health, and wellbeing. However, the social representations of cooking did not have a clear structure, which raised diverse associations related to homemade foods, positive emotions but also to lack of convenience in terms of time and effort. Results suggest public campaigns aimed at encouraging people to cook from scratch should position cooking as enjoyable task and diminish perception of lack of time and effort association.