Prue Leith: Cooking has become a spectator sport

From the Edith Clarke lecture given by the cookery writer at the University of Surrey

Every civilisation, anywhere on the globe, in any century, has until now prepared its food and eaten in some kind of social community. Only outcasts and hermits ate alone. Outcasts were punished by being denied participation in social activities and hermits were deliberately denying themselves that participation. But should we deny it to our children, and ourselves?

Today we eat alone all the time, in front of our television screens, in the street or at our desks. Children graduate from a hand-held fish finger to a hand-held burger.

We cannot expect our children to absorb our values if we hardly ever speak to them, if we eat in silence in front of the telly or only pass each other to and from the microwave as we each heat up our separate meals.

Modern social housing often doesn't include a cooker in the kitchen, or space for a table in the kitchen or living space. Designers tell us that people have no use for an oven because they can't cook and they buy everything ready to eat.

Children need to gain an idea of how important food is, and should get the chance to cook. I have never met a child who did not enjoy cooking.

Food is about sticking society together and a way of teaching us about life. It is also about nutrition. There would be a lot less pressure on the NHS if we were not the most overweight people in Europe, if we did not have the second highest heart disease rate, if one in four children wasn't overweight or one in 10 obese.

A lot of parents can't cook, and those that can often don't have time to. Only 25 per cent of families ever sit down to a meal together. And cooking skills are not passed down to children. Some 60 per cent of 14-year-olds have never boiled an egg. Yet cookbooks stream off the presses and Carlton television alone has 93 networked food programmes.

The fact is that the people who buy the cookbooks and the fresh herbs are the keen middle-class foodies. And most TV cooks are watched as entertainment. We are watching TV instead of cooking. Cooking has become a spectator sport.