1 . New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has found being confident in the kitchen is not only good for your taste buds, it’s also good for your mental health.

In total, 657 participants undertook the seven-week healthy cooking course. Researchers found those who participated in the program saw significant improvements in general health, mental health and subjective vitality immediately after the program which remained six months after completing the course, when compared to the study’s control group.

“Improving people’s diet quality can be a preventive strategy to stop or slow the rise in poor mental health, obesity and other health disorders,” Dr Joanna Rees said. “Future health programs should continue to prioritise the barriers to healthy eating such as poor food environments and time restrictions, while placing greater emphasis on the value of healthy eating via quick and easy home-cooked meals, rich in fruit and vegetables and avoiding processed convenience foods.”

The Institute has previously found a link between eating more fruits and vegetables, and improved longer term mental health in a larger study collecting more complex dietary data, implying the participants in the current study may have felt better due to improved diet. However, the study showed participants’ mental health improved despite their reported diet not being found to have changed after completing the program.

At the start of the program, 77 per cent of participants who’ identified as female claimed to be confident about cooking, compared to just 23 per cent of those who identified as male. But at the end of the program, cooking confidence and cooking skills were equal across both groups.

This change in confidence could see change to the household food environment by reducing the gender prejudice and leading to a gender balance in home cooking. This in turn may help to overcome some of the barriers presented by not knowing how to cook, such as easing the time limits which can lead to ready-made meals which are high in energy but low in nutritional value.

3 . When Chef Enrique Olvera opened his restaurant, Pujol, 13 years ago, his only goal was to have the best restaurant in the neighborhood. Olvera's budget was so small that he had to do all the things himself. But Pujol is now widely thought of as Mexico's finest restaurant and the 36th best in the world. He reached his position by making his cuisine 'fancier and fancier, and more complex' over time. Pujol now serves a tasting menu of sophisticated food that wouldn't look out of place even at New York's Momofuku Ko. To decode his rocket soar in world cuisine circus, Olvera insists on mixing elaborate, cutting-edge techniques with a strong emphasis on local ingredients to create a cosmopolitan cuisine that's at once international yet unmistakably Mexican, matching the direction of Mexico City itself.

A visit to the 48-seat Pujol reveals a space-age kitchen containing 27 cooks, with one making his fifth attempt to reshape the egg liquid and another coloring potatoes. Pujol tolerates any grotesque attempt a chef could imagine and the restaurant is the trial site for its staff. That makes Pujol a hot place to attract free labor. The chef has also thought more about bringing Mexican cooks home from the U.S. Many are returning to move past the glass ceiling that exists in America. “Despite the number of Mexicans working in U.S. restaurants, you rarely see a Mexican head chef in a New York kitchen,” said Olvera. “Then why not come back here to attract diners here for the most local but also novel dishes?”

And for foreign diners, Mexican restaurants have another wonder to offer. Just think that merely 30 dollars can sustain you for a 4-course feast in an ordinary Mexican restaurant and no one could resist the temptation. To achieve such high cost performance, Olvera states that you have to keep looking for and exploring with the simple ingredients from which to accomplish amazing dishes. “You always cherish where you come from, but there’s also the need for new sensations. Keep exploring with new ideas until you get a better dish.” After all, it’s the soul of modern cuisine.

5 . Four Best Cooking Apps

Wolfram Culinary Mathematics Reference

Requirement: iOS 9. 3+

Price: $ 1. 99

This app will help streamline our tasks of cooking by providing you with quick access to a set of tools specially designed for kitchen efficiency.

*Get nutritional(营养物的) information for individual foods or whole meals.

"Convert ingredient measurements (转换配料用量) to serve larger or smaller groups.

*Locate nearby grocery stores by place or store name.

Gordon Ramsay: Cook With Me

Requirement: iOS 4. 3+

Price: $ 5. 99

There are 56 recipe videos included in the app, showing the famous British professional cook Gordon Ramsay cooking the dish to give you the confidence to cook it yourself. And now there are 8 free text recipes plus 40 paid text recipes in the app.

MealBoard

Requirement: iOS 9.0+

Price: $ 3. 99

Store your recipes, create meal plans and grocery lists, keep track of your pantry inventory(储藏室的库存). All in one app!

*Import recipes from popular recipe websites, or add your own recipes.

*Make your grocery list based on the meal plan you created and check off grocery items as you shop.

*Keep track of what you have in your pantry, and record best-before dates and inventory locations.

*Email recipes, meal plans and shopping lists, and import recipes sent by other MealBoard users.

Fit Men Cook-Healthy Recipes

Requirement; i0S 10. 3+

Price: $ 2. 99

The winner of Apple App Store Best of 2015

Kevin Curry shares his journey to fitness with the Fit Men Cook community on social media and inside this app where you'll find the best way to prepare 273 of his most popular recipes.

10 . Whatever your tastes are, it is highly unlikely that many of you are using 3D printers to create your favorite meals. Still, anyone interested in the future of food can find technologists printing out snacks, from steaks to cakes, at the push of a button. Now laser cooking has arrived and it is adding an entirely new layer of gourmet (美食家) taste.

Columbia’s Creative Machines Lab team is hoping to build a digital personal chef to deliver taste, materials, and food to suit individual tastes. So far their experiments with chicken have created laser-cooked examples that have the same flavor as cooking, but use 50 percent fewer ingredients, and have the double content.

“In fact, our two blind taste testers preferred laser-cooked meat to the conventionally cooked samples, which shows the promise for this burgeoning technology,” said project leader James Blutinger. Scientists are working to promote this technology.

Creating software that would allow chefs to make their own designs—a Photoshop of food—is the next step. “We need high-level software that enables people who are not programmers to design the foods they want,” said group leader Hod Lipson. “And then we need a place where people can share digital directions as they share music.”

All of this could well change the way we think about and eat food. High on the list of positives is the fact that printed food can be healthier, lessen the environmental impact of food production—especially red meat—and cut waste.

Global food waste hit almost one billion metric tons in 2021. So future companies that turn food waste into tasty dishes and food decorations—like Natural Machines or Upprinting Food—are a welcome development. As food printing becomes more widespread, we may see instant printed and recycled meals as the dietary solution we were looking for.