Assessment of the culinary behavior of puerpera in a university hospital

In the food context, mothers are often associated with the responsibility of transmitting information about food, as well as food practices, from one generation to the next. In addition, children's food preferences can be influenced by parents' food preferences and by the accessibility of food at home, making the family system a determining factor in food education. Considering the scarcity of studies that assess the interference of mothers' cooking skills in the feeding of their children, this study aims to evaluate the knowledge of mothers who were hospitalized at the Lauro Wanderley University Hospital (HULW) about cooking skills, and more specifically, to assess whether postpartum women have culinary skills, to analyze the culinary attitude and the index of culinary skills. This is a cross-sectional study with the participation of 311 postpartum women admitted to a university hospital. Culinary skills were measured in the form of scores. The puerperal women were classified into three strata. According to the scores obtained, three categories were defined, considering the values of the 25th and 75th percentiles as lower limits (low cooking skills) and upper limits (high cooking skills), respectively. The study population showed a high index of culinary skills, as well as a high culinary attitude. The present study advances in the research and deepening of the theme, enabling one of the first approximations with the Brazilian reality, especially with regard to puerperal women. It is believed that, even being a first exploratory study on the culinary skills of puerperal women treated at a university hospital in northeastern Brazil, this study presents findings that can be used as a starting point for future research directions.