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Food for Thought

It goes without saying that designing L&D interventions requires to balance fun and challenge, theory and practice, informal and informative, cognitive and sensory and so the list can continue. Finding a methodology that allows to access and deploy all these requirements is not easy.

Having worked with food* for a several years now (after completing the chef’s training in 2022), I see a great deal of potential in using it as a learning stage. Here are a few starting thoughts that I hope to explore in coming posts (in theory) as well as in forthcoming L&D interventions (in practice).

  • Food is universal. Everyone can relate to it, and everyone has an opinion on it.

  • Food is personal. It is embedded in and is a reflection of individual’s culture, values, and beliefs, often captured in stories and memories.

  • Food is behavioural. What one does in the kitchen is a habit and a pattern.

  • Food is emotional, ranging from happiness to anger, from fun to tragic.

  • Food is multi sensory. It draws on cognition and intuition, and calls for thinking and experiencing simultaneously.

  • Food is challenging. Mastering food requires grit and persistence, continuously dealing with failure and soliciting feedback.


Looking at the list, makes me think that I might have uncovered a Holy Grail of training. It seems that food has it all and is well adept to trigger learning. As I embark on a project of using food as a learning methodology for a leadership development course, I am curious to explore the ‘food hypothesis’ in a bit more detail and look forward to reviewing methodological implications of using food for the L&D purpose.

I do appreciate that the subject of food may not be to everybody’s liking, but from where I stand at least the lunch will be cooked whilst learning would take place :-). Now, what do you think of this ‘learning recipe’?

Until next time!

*Food here involves both, ingredients and preparation.