Measuring Kitchen Performance: What Assessment Should we Choose?

Occupational therapy and cooking: A scoping review and future directions

BACKGROUND

Occupational therapy (OT) has historically used cooking as an intervention and assessment approach across settings. Current practices in OT and the emergence of the multidisciplinary field of culinary medicine highlight the relationship between cooking and health.

AIMS/OBJECTIVES

To map the current literature on OT and cooking and to identify key factors that may facilitate collaboration within culinary medicine.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We conducted a scoping review using the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology to identify primary contexts and clinical settings. Publications were analysed using framework thematic analysis to identify OT themes and roles.

RESULTS

A total of 56 studies met the criteria for inclusion. The majority of studies (n = 29, 53%) represented home/community settings and brain injury was the largest clinical group (n = 15, 27%). Primary themes related to person (n = 47, 43%), occupation (n = 30 (28%), environment (n = 19, 17%), and psychosocial wellbeing (n = 13, 12%). The primary OT role identified was that of interventionist (n = 48, 86%).

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE

OT's holistic practice places cooking within a larger context that can help identify and overcome the barriers to participation. Findings support multiple pathways in which OT can contribute to cooking initiatives for health promotion and potentially expand OT practice in population health.

Well-Being and Cooking Behavior: Using the Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (PERMA) Model as a Theoretical Framework

The prevalence of psychosocial distress is increasing in the United States. At the same time, the American default lifestyle has steadily displaced household food production with industrial food production, despite increased cultural interest in cooking. An important focus of cooking research to date has been on cooking's association with nutrition and dietary quality. Less focus has been placed on how cooking might foster the qualities that allow for mitigation of psychosocial distress and promote well-being. Rooted in its evolutionary role in the human experience, cooking requires skills and knowledge that have the capacity to encourage aspects of well-being as described by Seligman as flourishing. Evidence for a beneficial role of cooking in psychosocial health exists, but the exploration is limited, potentially due to lack of a theoretical context to explain these benefits. From this perspective, we review the current literature showing the application of Seligman's prominent well-being model, Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (PERMA), to cooking, defined as the activity related to the preparation of food or a meal. We propose that the PERMA model as applied to cooking may function as a theoretical framework to explore psychosocial outcomes associated with cooking. Broader application of this approach may also help to further the application of positive psychology in the developing literature around psychosocial health and nutrition-related chronic diseases.

A community feasibility study of a cooking behavior intervention in African-American adults at risk for cardiovascular disease: DC COOKS (DC Community Organizing for Optimal culinary Knowledge Study) with Heart

Background

Cooking interventions have increased in popularity in recent years. Evaluation by meta-analyses and systematic reviews show consistent changes in dietary quality reports and cooking confidence, but not of cardiovascular (CVD) biomarkers. Interventions evaluating or reporting behavioral mechanisms as an explanatory factor for these outcomes has been sparse. Moreover, evaluations of cooking interventions among communities with health disparities or food access limitations have received little attention in the literature.

Methods

This study will occur over two phases. Phase 1 will assess acceptability among the target population of African-American adults living within an urban food desert. Phase 2 will consist of a 6-week cooking intervention delivered at a community kitchen setting. Pre and post intervention visits for clinical examinations and biomarker collection will be conducted, as well as dietary and cooking skill assessments. Primary outcomes include cooking behavior and feasibility measures. Secondary outcomes are related to dietary quality, psychosocial factors, CVD biomarkers, and food environment measures.

Discussion

This study seeks to demonstrate feasibility of a community-based cooking intervention and to provide necessary information to plan future interventions that identify cooking behavior as an outcome of participation in cooking interventions among African-American adults, especially in relation to dietary and biomarker outcomes.

Trial registration

This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04305431) on March 12, 2020.

Executive functioning: a scoping review of the occupational therapy literature

BACKGROUND

Increasingly recognized as an important factor in the performance of complex, goal-directed tasks, executive functioning is understood in different ways across disciplines.

PURPOSE

The aim was to explore the ways in which executive functioning is conceptualized, discussed, described, and implied in the occupational therapy literature.

METHOD

A scoping review of the occupational therapy literature was conducted following Levac, Colquhoun, and O'Brien's (2010) recommended methodology.

RESULTS

Executive functioning is described both as a set of performance component skills or processes and as the executive occupational performance inherent in complex occupations. Executive functioning is implicit in occupational performance and engagement, and some health conditions seem to be commonly associated with impaired executive functioning. Assessing executive functioning requires dynamic occupation- and performance-based assessment. Interventions targeting executive functioning are grounded in metacognitive approaches.

CONCLUSION

Executive functioning is a complex construct that is conceptualized with considerable variance within the occupational therapy literature, creating barriers to effective service delivery.

Assessing executive performance during cognitive rehabilitation

Executive functioning influences a host of other cognitive processes and people who attend neuropsychological services are more likely to display executive dysfunction than any other cognitive deficit (Stuss & Levine, 2002). Impairment in executive functioning disrupts a person's ability to effectively employ their intact areas of functioning, and undermines effective self-management of other areas of dysfunction, hampering attempts to employ compensatory strategies. Therefore, assessment of a person's executive functioning is a high priority as part of a comprehensive neurorehabilitation plan. Guided by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health model (ICF model; Peterson, 2005), we suggest that an important development in the field is moving to formal assessment of executive performance in functional contexts, in addition to more traditional assessment of executive impairment. We outline a number of existing studies in this area, review current measures that can provide clinicians with useful information on these issues, and discuss how this research could be further advanced.

Actual reality: a new approach to functional assessment in persons with multiple sclerosis

OBJECTIVE

To examine the use of an innovative approach for assessing everyday life activities of people with multiple sclerosis (MS): Actual Reality. Actual Reality is a performance-based assessment approach that involves the use of the internet to perform real, everyday life activities.

DESIGN

A between-subjects design.

SETTING

Outpatient rehabilitation institute.

PARTICIPANTS

Persons (n=21) with clinically definite MS and healthy controls (HCs) (n=18) without any reported neurologic disabilities participated in this study. Participants were between the ages of 21 to 60 years, and the sample consisted of volunteer sample.

INTERVENTIONS

Not applicable.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Participants were asked to access the internet to purchase airline tickets for a round trip flight and were administered the Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Functioning in Multiple Sclerosis. Participants also completed questionnaires to assess quality of life (Functional Assessment of Multiple Sclerosis), functional status (Functional Behavior Profile), and prior Internet experience.

RESULTS

The MS group displayed significantly more difficulties than the HC group in accurately and independently completing the Actual Reality task primarily because of cognitive impairment. Self-report of quality of life and functional status were not correlated with Actual Reality performance in the group of people with MS. However, the self-report measures were significantly associated with affective symptomatology.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide initial evidence supporting the use of the Actual Reality approach in assessing persons with MS performing everyday life activities. Actual Reality is a significant step forward in increasing the sensitivity, accessibility, and relevancy of functional assessments in people with cognitive and physical disabilities.

[Kitchen and schizophrenia: a crossroad activity of an ecological, occupational and neuropsychological assessment]

In this exploratory study, the authors examine the various occupational and neuropsychological assessments used to analyze deficits qualitatively and quantitatively in patients with schizophrenia. Considering that it is necessary to further explore their repercussion on the performance of activity of daily living (ADL) and domestic activities (DA), they thus attempt to verify if the distinction between two levels of functional autonomy could translate at the cognitive and clinical levels in (25) 23 patients included in a program destined to young adults (schizophrenia spectrum DSM-IV criteria) in Montréal. These patients had the opportunity, within the clinical program, to submit to neuropsychological evaluations as well as evaluations offered by the occupational therapy service thanks to a tool frequently used by occupational therapists entitled Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). The objective of this article is to conjugate two possible perspectives, drawn from two different disciplines, on a very current human activity such as "preparing meals" in people suffering from schizophrenia and which functioning of daily life is disturbed.