Cook It: the classroom becomes a kitchen

A VR cooking game built with FoodStream Network, so New York students learn food and nutrition by cooking it rather than sitting through it.

Download the Cook It! case study PDF

Reaching for an ingredient at the bench.

A lesson you pick up and cook

Cook It puts a working kitchen inside the headset. Students read the recipe, find the ingredients, measure, cook and serve, in a room where nothing burns and nothing is wasted.

FoodStream Network brought the brief, the funding and the classrooms. PTR designed and built the game.

The lesson that was not landing

In New York City schools serving low-income neighbourhoods, food, nutrition and health were the topics teachers found hardest to make matter.

A young woman wearing a VR headset faces a floating panel of three choices in an empty classroom, pausing mid-scenario to decide how she responds — Choosing what to do next, in a classroom.

Dull on paper, hard to teach

Many of the students come from migrant families and low-income neighbourhoods, and food education reached them as a worksheet: abstract, clinical and a long way from what is on the table at home.

FoodStream wanted a lesson students would choose to do. That meant something to do with their hands.

What PTR built

A game kitchen where the recipe is the lesson: reading it is literacy, following it is measuring and chemistry, and the food carries the culture it comes from.

A man wearing a headset holds a jug at chest height in a kitchen, cupboards and a window behind him. A VR cooking scene. — Pouring from a jug at the bench.

A woman wearing a headset holds her hands above a bowl on a kitchen bench, a pan and utensils behind her. A VR cooking scene. — Hands over a bowl on the bench.

A woman wearing a headset shapes a translucent jug between her hands in a white kitchen. A VR cooking scene. — A jug shaped by hand in the headset.

Cooking is teamwork

FoodStream counts teamwork as part of the lesson: students cook and reflect in teams, and a kitchen only works when the people in it share it.

A simulated commercial training kitchen, stainless benches and plain pans. A young apprentice in the headset works at a bench while a chef instructor stands at the pass, arms folded. — An instructor watches an apprentice at the bench.

A head chef talks with a line cook. A VR training scenario for workplace and enterprise. — A chef checks in at the pass.

A wheelchair user demonstrates cooking to a woman. A VR training scenario for aged care and disability services. — A cooking demonstration from a wheelchair.

Built for every student in the room

Cook It was designed to be accessible from the start. Students who use wheelchairs, students with hearing impairments and students learning English play the same game as everyone else.

The ingredients are affordable ones and the recipes come from the cultures in the room, so the lesson looks like home.

"Many of us have likely found ourselves gazing out of a window during a training session, questioning the relevance of what we are learning. Traditional training methods can sometimes feel disconnected from real-life applications, leading to disengagement and a lack of tangible outcomes."

Simon Lowe, PTR's CEO. Simon Lowe
CEO, People Tech Revolution. Let's be prepared, Global Best Practice Group, August 2024

A teacher wearing a headset holds a small molecular model up to the light in a school science laboratory. A VR scene for education. — A teacher holds up a molecule.

The recipe is the curriculum

Reading the recipe is literacy. Measuring and scaling it is maths. Watching food change with heat and time is chemistry and biology. FoodStream built the lessons so a class meets all of it in one dish.

That mix is what FoodStream means by opening STEAM pathways: technology and cooking in the same lesson.

How it reached the classroom

FoodStream Network secured the funding for game development, teacher training and the program rollout, and collected data on what changed for students.

A teacher in a primary classroom, mid-sentence.

Teachers run it, FoodStream measures it

Teachers are trained to run the sessions themselves, in their own classrooms, with the headsets FoodStream brings in.

FoodStream's evaluation looked at three things: whether students chose to take part, what they remembered afterwards, and how long they stayed in the game.

What FoodStream measured

The evaluation ran in one classroom of 12 students. Every figure here is FoodStream Network's, from its own case study.

A VR training scenario in which a man stands by the counter of a small kitchenette beside a floating panel of choices, seen over the shoulder of the person in the headset. — Choosing what to do in the kitchenette.

students offered the Cook It VR session

9 of 12

chose to take part in the VR session

75%

recall when asked where an ingredient was, and to spell it

100%

stayed in the game for over eight minutes, often needing encouragement to stop

Figures as reported by FoodStream Network from its classroom evaluation.FoodStream Network, Food Education Case Study, 2025

A man wearing a headset gestures with one hand in a bright kitchen, a sink and cupboards behind him. A VR cooking scene. — Answering a prompt in the kitchen.

What changed for the students

FoodStream reported a marked improvement in students' understanding of nutrition and in their interest in it.

Inside the game, students read food labels readily, something FoodStream saw them avoid in a real kitchen. A room with no consequences changes what people are willing to try.

Cooking as a way into science

FoodStream's brief was food, language and technology in one lesson: a recipe read at the bench is also reading, measuring and chemistry, and the same skills carry into a laboratory.