Correlations between Self-Reported Cooking Confidence and Creativity and Use of Convenience Cooking Products in an Australian Cohort
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study investigated relationships between self-reported cooking skills confidence and creativity and the use of convenience cooking products. This study is novel as not much is known yet about cooking skills and about the use of convenience cooking products as opportunities to increase healthy eating behaviours, in particular increasing vegetable consumption.
In the current form, there is insufficient and confusing information on the tools used and the data gathered to measure cooking skills confidence and creativity and it is not possible to evaluate the quality of these instruments. The authors mention that the questionnaire was based on a previously validated questionnaire. However, it is unclear what modifications were made. The validated scale consists of 14 items for cooking skills and 19 items for food skills. Creativity was not a scale used by those authors. The validated questionnaire used a 7-point scale whereas the current study uses a 5-point scale. The data mean scores reported in the tables of the current manuscript do not reflect the actual means (expected value between 1-5, whereas actual scores were around 25 for cooking skills confidence) and does not appear to be a summed score based on number of items of the original scale multiplied by the item score either. If modifications were made to the original scale, what steps have been taken in this study to verify the validity of the scale used?
Line 96: Was a definition or examples provided to participants for each category? If not, it may have been difficult for participants to know exactly which products where in which category which may have affected their ratings.
Line 109: Was Cronbach alpha applied to verify that the scales had adequate internal consistency? Report those values.
Table 3-8: As mentioned above, a mean value would expect value between 1-5, whereas actual scores were around 25 (for cooking skills confidence). Include more details on number of questions and theoretical range of scores
Table 3-8 and discussion. Most differences between groups that are statistically significant seem very small (although difficult to determine as they do not represent a mean and the theoretical range is lacking). To what extent are the differences meaningful and warrant different approaches for different groups?
Line 244-246: a reflection on the absolute values rated by the group (not just subgroups) and compared to what was found in other studies would be useful to understand the data of the current study better.
Line 249: can the authors elaborate on what a proper design of such convenience products would look like?
The discussion is lacking a reflection on vegetables as in the introduction and the abstract
Conclusion: this section does not really contain a conclusion and could be integrated in the discussion.
Minor grammatical/editing comments:
Line 118: change regress to regression
Line 127: add decimal point to age for consistency
Tables: use decimals consistently
Line 136: an ‘s’ is missing behind ‘products’
Line 171: typo in Table 5
Line 207-208: sentence grammatically incorrect
Line 211: changes. Better to use ‘differences’ as different groups
Author Response
This study investigated relationships between self-reported cooking skills confidence and creativity and the use of convenience cooking products. This study is novel as not much is known yet about cooking skills and about the use of convenience cooking products as opportunities to increase healthy eating behaviours, in particular increasing vegetable consumption.
Response: We thank the reviewer for this observation and for their time in assisting us to improve this manuscript. We hope with the extensive edits now made that it is suitable for publication.
In the current form, there is insufficient and confusing information on the tools used and the data gathered to measure cooking skills confidence and creativity and it is not possible to evaluate the quality of these instruments. The authors mention that the questionnaire was based on a previously validated questionnaire. However, it is unclear what modifications were made. The validated scale consists of 14 items for cooking skills and 19 items for food skills. Creativity was not a scale used by those authors. The validated questionnaire used a 7-point scale whereas the current study uses a 5-point scale. The data mean scores reported in the tables of the current manuscript do not reflect the actual means (expected value between 1-5, whereas actual scores were around 25 for cooking skills confidence) and does not appear to be a summed score based on number of items of the original scale multiplied by the item score either. If modifications were made to the original scale, what steps have been taken in this study to verify the validity of the scale used?
Response: Apologies, we thank the reviewer for their thoroughness. Firstly, we have edited the reference, as we had inadvertently used the wrong Lavelle et al paper for the citation, the reference should have been “Lavelle F, Bucher T, Dean M, Brown HM, Rollo ME, Collins CE. Diet quality is more strongly related to food skills rather than cooking skills confidence: Results from a national cross‐sectional survey. Nutrition & Dietetics. 2020 Feb;77(1):112-20.” In this paper there were 5 scales used, cooking skills, food skills, cooking identity, food creativity and food neophilia. We have used the cooking identity scale as a marker of confidence, and food creativity scale as a marker of creativity, with minor amendments (one item on the cooking identify scale has been replaced with and additional reversed item. “I can time different elements of a dish to come together on time” was replaced with “I don’t consider myself to be a good cook” to serve as an additional attention check.
The cooking identity scale is a measure of cooking confidence or self-efficacy and included statements like ‘I am a good cook’ and ‘others view me as a good cook’. The food creativity scale included statements such as ‘I am good at coming up with new and different recipe ideas’ and ‘I don't have much of an imagination about things to cook’ and was used as a measure for cooking creativity. The statements on the scales were rated on a five-point scale which ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). These ratings on the two scales were used to calculate a measure for foods creativity and a cooking confidence score for each participant, by calculating a total score for each scale. We have now included the questions for the two scales as supplementary material for transparency.
However, this error is a blessing in disguise as it has highlighted the need for us to be more careful in our language to ensure clarity. We have extensively revised this section of the methods to make the context from the referenced study and the modification made to the scale clear. We thank the reviewer again for their attention to detail in providing this feedback. We have made the following changes to address this feedback:
The title has been updated to “Correlations between self-reported cooking confidence and creativity and use of convenience cooking products in an Australian cohort” to avoid referring to skills.
The abstract updated to mention creativity in the background and the methods were updated and now read “Australian adults were surveyed (snowball recruitment, n=842) on their use of convenience cooking products (meal bases/recipe concentrates, simmer sauces, marinades and other cooking sauces), cooking confidence (7 item scale) and creativity (6 item scale), and demographic information.” We have also made small edits throughout to make it clear that we regard confidence and creativity as elements of cooking skill.
Methods - We have updated the explanation of the scales in section 2.3 to read “The cooking confidence and creativity scales included in this questionnaire were based on the cooking identity and food creativity scales used in a previously validated questionnaire [23], with minor modifications. The cooking identity scale was used as a measure of cooking confidence as it contains items such as ‘others view me as a good cook’. A minor modification to this scale was made to remove ‘I can time different elements of a dish to come together on time’ was replaced with ‘I don’t consider myself to be a good cook’ to serve as an additional attention check. The food creativity scale was used as a measure of cooking creativity and included statements such as ‘I am good at coming up with new and different recipe ideas’ and ‘I don't have much of an imagination about things to cook’. The complete scales are included in the supplementary materials (supplementary methods). Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated to assess the internal validity of the scales. The statements were rated on a five-point rating scale which ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). These ratings were summed to calculate a cooking confidence (maximum score 35) and a cooking creativity score (maximum score 30) for each participant. Reversed style questions of cooking confidence and creativity were used as an attention check to test if participants were reading the questions carefully.”
Again, we thank the reviewer for picking this up and drawing it to our attention in such a detailed and kind way.
Line 96: Was a definition or examples provided to participants for each category? If not, it may have been difficult for participants to know exactly which products where in which category which may have affected their ratings.
Response: Examples were not provided, as such we relied on self-identification as a user/non-user of each product category. We have added this as a potential limitation in the discussion. “It should also be considered that no description or example of the product categories was provided, which may have led to differences in interpretation.”
Line 109: Was Cronbach alpha applied to verify that the scales had adequate internal consistency? Report those values.
Response: We have edited to include the Cronbach’s Alpha scores which were 0.90 for the cooking identity (confidence) scale and 0.87 for the food creativity scale. We now state in section 3.3 “The internal reliability of the cooking confidence and creativity scales was high, with Cronbach’s Alpha scores of 0.90 and 0.87, respectively.”
Table 3-8: As mentioned above, a mean value would expect value between 1-5, whereas actual scores were around 25 (for cooking skills confidence). Include more details on number of questions and theoretical range of scores
Response: Apologies, summed rather than mean values were presented, we have edited this in the methods and we have also edited to provide the hypothetical score range and the range of responses obtained in the sample. In section 3.3 we now state “The cooking confidence scores ranged from 8 to 35 (possible range 7-35), with a sample mean of 27.0 (standard deviation 5.1). The cooking creativity scores ranged from 6 to 30 (possible range 6-30), with a sample mean of 18.1 (standard deviation 5.2).”
Table 3-8 and discussion. Most differences between groups that are statistically significant seem very small (although difficult to determine as they do not represent a mean and the theoretical range is lacking). To what extent are the differences meaningful and warrant different approaches for different groups?
Response: We have edited to present the theoretical and obtained ranges in section 3.3 as noted above. It is difficult to contextualize the differences using indices obtained from scales, however, and we have added a discussion of the magnitude of differences vs statistical significance in the discussion. We believe that the novelty of this investigation warrants presentation of these results to justify further investigations to better demonstrate the meaning and magnitude of these difference and to determine the implications for approaches and cause and effect.
For context we have added to the discussion “. Despite these potential limitations the mean scores for this sample were similar to those obtained by Lavelle et al. [23] in a more representative population, using the original scales that were modified for use in this study.”
We have added further context in the discussion by comparing the results in our categories to the data from the Lavelle et al paper from which the scales were obtained. “The differences in the cooking confidence and creativity scale scores between groups were statistically significant but numerically small. However, it is important to remember that the indices used are unitless and values are arbitrary. The data obtained here can be compared to the data of Lavelle et al. [23], as the cooking creativity scale used here was identical to their food creativity scale, and the cooking confidence scale used here contained only one modified question. For the cooking confidence scale the scores for users of convenience cooking products obtained here reflect those in the lower two quartiles of the representative Australian sample studied in Lavelle et al. [23]. Comparing the scores for the two extremes of recipe following shows that those who always follow the recipes had scores reflective of the lowest quartile of confidence in the representative sample and those who never follow the recipe had scores that reflect the second highest quartile of the representative sample. For the cooking creativity scale the scores for users of convenience cooking products obtained here reflect those in the lowest of the representative Australian sample studied in Lavelle et al. [23] and the scores for non-user reflect those in the middle quartiles. Comparing the scores for the two extremes of recipe following shows that those who always follow the recipes had scores reflective of the lowest quartile of creativity in the representative sample and those who never follow the recipe had scores that reflect the second lowest quartile of the representative sample.”
Line 244-246: a reflection on the absolute values rated by the group (not just subgroups) and compared to what was found in other studies would be useful to understand the data of the current study better.
Response: We have added a discussion of the comparison of scores to those found in the study from which the scales were taken as described in the responses above.
Line 249: can the authors elaborate on what a proper design of such convenience products would look like?
Response: We have edited designed appropriately to “designed to include sufficient vegetables in their back-of-pack recipes, may be a tool to tackle poor-quality diets in individuals with poor cooking skills”
The discussion is lacking a reflection on vegetables as in the introduction and the abstract
Response: We have expanded the discussion to include more references to vegetables including “These findings suggests these products, and the recipes provided, are more likely to be utilized by individuals with lower cooking skills. As such, if coupled with other improvements, such as the Australian Governments Healthy Food Partnerships reformulation targets [35], these products, designed to include sufficient vegetables in their back-of-pack recipes, may be a tool to tackle poor-quality diets in individuals with poor cooking skills. This could be especially useful to encourage people away from higher energy and pre-prepared convenience and discretionary food choices. Convenience cooking products are typically used to prepare evening meals, where the majority of vegetables are typically consumed [36, 37]. However, there is currently no compiled independent data describing the vegetable content of these products, and recipes are likely to vary widely.
Cooking skills contribute to overall diet quality, and vegetable consumption [38], with a link between low cooking skills and health outcomes in a variety of socio-economic groups [22].”
Conclusion: this section does not really contain a conclusion and could be integrated in the discussion.
Response: We have edited the conclusion to read “Research into convenience cooking products is important as these products are becoming more common in the Australian household and cooking skills are declining. Given the association between use of these products and frequency of recipe following and cooking confidence and creativity, further investigations are warranted into the relationships and the potential for these products to be used as tool to improve vegetable intake and diet quality. This may complement traditional approaches such as education in improving vegetable intakes and product reformulation, while addressing barriers to vegetable intake such as skills, confidence, convenience, cost and time.”
Minor grammatical/editing comments:
Line 118: change regress to regression
Response: updated.
Line 127: add decimal point to age for consistency
Response: We cannot do this as it introduces resolution into that data that does not exist, age was asked as a whole number/year, so we do not have a decimal place level of resolution to add. We have instead removed the decimal place from
Tables: use decimals consistently
Response: We have revised to ensure all percentages are one decimal place, all counts are whole numbers and all p-values are 1 significant figure.
Line 136: an ‘s’ is missing behind ‘products’
Response: updated.
Line 171: typo in Table 5
Response: updated
Line 207-208: sentence grammatically incorrect
Response: Thank you, we have updated and grammar checked throughout.
Line 211: changes. Better to use ‘differences’ as different groups
Response: Apologies, the version reviewed appears to have shift line numbers compared to the submitted and returned versions we have – we believe we have updated the appropriate sentence, please advise if not.
Response: Truly thank you for this detailed, yet kind review. We truly appreciate the efforts to enhance and ensure the validity of the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Summary
This study examines the use of convenience cooking products and their association with perceived cooking confidence and creativity. This is a novel study that is highly relevant in the current food environment, given the increased availability of such products.
Broad comments
The study comes across as methodologically sound and the findings are generally well-presented.
The rationale for the study includes the idea that people who use these products and follow the attached recipes could increase their vegetable intakes if the recipes included more vegetables. I think this rationale needs to be further developed. Do the recipes currently contain a good variety of vegetables, or would they need to change? When people follow the recipes, how many serves of vegetables are they consuming? What about the high energy and sodium content of these products? Further comments about this are under the Discussion heading.
I also feel that given that the data was collected in the midst of Covid-19, the possible implications of this need to be addressed. Again, I have provided further comments on this in the Discussion section.
Specific comments
Introduction:
There are some other studies that have looked at the link between cooking confidence and convenience product use that should be included. E.g. Bava et al. Constraints upon food provisioning practices in ‘busy’ women's lives: Trade-offs which demand convenience. Appetite, 2008, 50, 486-498. Also, Burton et al. Food skills confidence and household gatekeepers’ dietary practices. Appetite, 2017, 108, pp.183-190.
Methods:
Line 105: I think it would be good to include a couple of examples of both the confidence questions and the creativity questions to give the reader an idea of the types of questions asked.
Results:
Line 128: Write 77.7% in words or rephrase sentence.
Table 1: Define what ‘others’ means under income. Were they missing values?
Line 151: Were the results not adjusted for education? Considering that a large proportion were university educated it would be worth while doing this. If there was a reason for not doing this, include an explanation in the methods.
Line 160: Were these results adjusted for education? It is not mentioned in the text, but is included in the footer of Table 4.
Line 171: Change (tables 5) to (Table 5).
Line 172: Education is again mentioned in the Table 5 footer but not the text.
Line 183: Education is again mentioned in the Table 6 footer but not the text.
Line 192: Change to ‘Neither cooking skills confidence (Table 7) nor creativity skills…’
Line 206: Change to ‘Cooking confidence scores were low in users of all….’
Line 208: Fix grammatical error – ‘presented findings demonstrated that those who reported reporting to always follow’
Discussion:
The discussion provides a good overview of the findings and compares the findings to other literature, but I feel that it is missing some deeper discussions.
- Given that cooking confidence and creativity were associated with convenience product use, but not with the frequency of use, I think this is worth exploring a little further in the discussion. Are there any potential reasons for this that you can put forward knowing the current available evidence?
- I feel that the negative aspects of convenience cooking products need to be addressed. The authors briefly mention in the introduction that convenience cooking products are often high in energy, fat and carbohydrates (as well as sodium). However, one of the main rationales that the authors put forward, is that by improving the vegetable content of the recipes provided with the products, it may be a useful tool to increase vegetable intakes in users with low cooking skills. While this strategy may help to increase vegetable intakes, it also encourages the use of products that are high in energy and sodium. I believe the authors’ theory is that people are using them anyway, so this is a good way to improve their diet. However, I the negative aspects of these products needs to be discussed.
- Given that the data was collected during Covid-19, I think that this needs to be considered, possibly in the limitations. It may be that more people were using convenience cooking products because they could easily store them in the pantry for a long time. Or, it is possible that fewer people used them during this time because they had more time to cook from scratch. This needs to be briefly addressed in the limitations, just so as to acknowledge that this may have affected the results.
Author Response
Summary
This study examines the use of convenience cooking products and their association with perceived cooking confidence and creativity. This is a novel study that is highly relevant in the current food environment, given the increased availability of such products.
Response: We thank you for this review and these remarks.
Broad comments
The study comes across as methodologically sound and the findings are generally well-presented.
Response: Thank you for this assessment.
The rationale for the study includes the idea that people who use these products and follow the attached recipes could increase their vegetable intakes if the recipes included more vegetables. I think this rationale needs to be further developed. Do the recipes currently contain a good variety of vegetables, or would they need to change? When people follow the recipes, how many serves of vegetables are they consuming? What about the high energy and sodium content of these products? Further comments about this are under the Discussion heading.
Response: We have edited the discussion to expand “These findings suggests these products, and the recipes provided, are more likely to be utilized by individuals with lower cooking skills. As such, if coupled with other improvements, such as the Australian Governments Healthy Food Partnerships reformulation targets [35], these products, designed to include sufficient vegetables in their back-of-pack recipes, may be a tool to tackle poor-quality diets in individuals with poor cooking skills. This could be especially useful to encourage people away from higher energy and pre-prepared convenience and discretionary food choices. Convenience cooking products are typically used to prepare evening meals, where the majority of vegetables are typically consumed [36, 37]. However, there is currently no compiled independent data describing the vegetable content of these products, and recipes are likely to vary widely.” However, there is no independent and collective data available on the vegetable content of these products, and we have recently prepared an audit of these products which is currently also in submission for publication.
I also feel that given that the data was collected in the midst of Covid-19, the possible implications of this need to be addressed. Again, I have provided further comments on this in the Discussion section.
Response: We have added a note on this in the discussion. “Furthermore, the data was collected in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, this may have impacted cooking habits at the time.”
Specific comments
Introduction:
There are some other studies that have looked at the link between cooking confidence and convenience product use that should be included. E.g. Bava et al. Constraints upon food provisioning practices in ‘busy’ women's lives: Trade-offs which demand convenience. Appetite, 2008, 50, 486-498. Also, Burton et al. Food skills confidence and household gatekeepers’ dietary practices. Appetite, 2017, 108, pp.183-190.
Response: We have added the following to the discussion to incorporate these references “This supports the findings of an Australian study of main household dietary decision makers which found that the lowest confidence group were significantly more likely to report convenience ingredient use (Burton et al. Food skills confidence and household gatekeepers’ dietary practices. Appetite, 2017, 108, pp.183-190). Similarly, semi-structured interviews with 11 women in Australia and New Zealand suggested that the greater the perceived time pressures, the greater the likelihood of seeking convenience options Bava et al. Constraints upon food provisioning practices in ‘busy’ women's lives: Trade-offs which demand convenience. Appetite, 2008, 50, 486-498. Therefore, if properly designed, convenience cooking products could be used as a tool to encourage more home cooking in those with low levels of skills and confidence, and particularly in those also encountering other barriers such as time or cost.”
Methods:
Line 105: I think it would be good to include a couple of examples of both the confidence questions and the creativity questions to give the reader an idea of the types of questions asked.
Response: We have added examples in the methods and added the full scales as supplementary materials.
Results:
Line 128: Write 77.7% in words or rephrase sentence.
Response: We have updated to avoid starting the sentence with a number.
Table 1: Define what ‘others’ means under income. Were they missing values?
Response: We have revised this to include the details – Declined to respond or did not know.
Line 160: Were these results adjusted for education? It is not mentioned in the text, but is included in the footer of Table 4. Line 151: Were the results not adjusted for education? Considering that a large proportion were university educated it would be worth while doing this. If there was a reason for not doing this, include an explanation in the methods.
Response: It appears we have accidentally dropped education from this list in the reporting of the results in text and we have edited this. Thank you for noticing this typographical error. Yes, analyses were adjusted for education along with sex, income, age and working hours. As stated in the methods “Standard least squares regression was used to compare adjusted least squares means by category (adjusted for age, sex, income, education and working hours).” It is included in the footnotes for tables 3-8 “*adjusted for age, sex, income, education and working hours.”
Line 171: Change (tables 5) to (Table 5).
Response: updated.
Line 172: Education is again mentioned in the Table 5 footer but not the text. Line 183: Education is again mentioned in the Table 6 footer but not the text.
Response: Apologies and thank you, we have updated the text.
Line 192: Change to ‘Neither cooking skills confidence (Table 7) nor creativity skills…’
Response: Updated.
Line 206: Change to ‘Cooking confidence scores were low in users of all….’
Response: Updated. Again, thank you for this attention to detail, it is truly appreciated by the authors.
Line 208: Fix grammatical error – ‘presented findings demonstrated that those who reported reporting to always follow’
Response: Updated, again with our thanks.
Discussion:
The discussion provides a good overview of the findings and compares the findings to other literature, but I feel that it is missing some deeper discussions.
Given that cooking confidence and creativity were associated with convenience product use, but not with the frequency of use, I think this is worth exploring a little further in the discussion. Are there any potential reasons for this that you can put forward knowing the current available evidence?
Response: The lack of association for frequency of use may be explained by the large range of products assessed and overlapping use between the categories. Or it may be due to the frequencies options used. In the discussion following the statement “However, within users, frequency of use was not associated with changes in either cooking confidence or creativity scores” we have added “This may be due to the frequency categories used or the overlap in the multiple categories of products assessed.”
I feel that the negative aspects of convenience cooking products need to be addressed. The authors briefly mention in the introduction that convenience cooking products are often high in energy, fat and carbohydrates (as well as sodium). However, one of the main rationales that the authors put forward, is that by improving the vegetable content of the recipes provided with the products, it may be a useful tool to increase vegetable intakes in users with low cooking skills. While this strategy may help to increase vegetable intakes, it also encourages the use of products that are high in energy and sodium. I believe the authors’ theory is that people are using them anyway, so this is a good way to improve their diet. However, I the negative aspects of these products needs to be discussed.
Response: We have added to the discussion “As such, if coupled with other improvements, such as the Australian Governments Healthy Food Partnerships reformulation targets [35], these products, designed to include sufficient vegetables in their back-of-pack recipes, may be a tool to tackle poor-quality diets in individuals with poor cooking skills. This could be especially useful to encourage people away from higher energy and pre-prepared convenience and discretionary food choices. Convenience cooking products are typically used to prepare evening meals, where the majority of vegetables are typically consumed [36, 37]. However, there is currently no compiled independent data describing the vegetable content of these products, and recipes are likely to vary widely.”
Given that the data was collected during Covid-19, I think that this needs to be considered, possibly in the limitations. It may be that more people were using convenience cooking products because they could easily store them in the pantry for a long time. Or, it is possible that fewer people used them during this time because they had more time to cook from scratch. This needs to be briefly addressed in the limitations, just so as to acknowledge that this may have affected the results.
Response: We have added a note on this in the discussion. “Furthermore, the data was collected in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, this may have impacted cooking habits at the time.”
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have appropriately incorporated the feedback.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed all comments very well. This is an excellent paper!
