Learning cooking competence after leaving home: A mixed-methods systematic review of emerging adults

Cooking competence plays a central role in shaping diet patterns and structuring everyday life. Yet, how emerging adults learn cooking competence after leaving the parental home remains insufficiently understood. Existing research has tended to emphasise parental transmission, school-based education and structured intervention, reflecting transfer-based learning assumptions. Following Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines, this review was conducted as a mixed-methods systematic review integrating quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method evidence through a convergent-integrated synthesis to interpret learning across study designs. A total of 35 empirical studies published between 1990 and 2025, and identified across five databases, were included. The aim was to explore what is known about emerging adults' learning of cooking competence. The review was pre-registered in Prospero (CRD42024534477). Across diverse study designs and purposes, three key findings emerge. First, the transition to independent living constitutes a distinct and formative context in which cooking competence is learned, driven by new responsibilities, routines and shifting material conditions. Second, emerging adults appear as agentic and competent learners who experiment and navigate everyday constraints. Third, learning cooking competence is predominantly practice-based and supported by multiple sources of people and tools, including social media, whereas parental instruction, school and interventions play more limited roles than commonly assumed. These findings show that current research underestimates practice-based learning processes during emerging adulthood and overemphasises formal instruction. The review identifies theoretical and methodological challenges in existing literature and highlights the need for research designs attending to everyday practice, contextual conditions, and the lived experience of emerging adults. The synthesis provides conceptual and methodological insight for researchers, policy, and practice by clarifying what is currently known about emerging adults' learning of cooking competence after leaving the parental home.