The good news is that there's no real reason to think that food you prepare yourself is for some reason intrinsically healthier than food someone else prepares for you. Indeed, a normal "home cooked" meal is mostly eaten by people who didn't cook it. One or two people cook, and the kids or the guests eat. And at the same time, it's not as if the good people at Taco Bell are serving unhealthy food out of some perverse desire to clog America's arteries. They're just trying to make money the best way they know how. If someone--Jamie Oliver, for example--devised an appealing mass-market food product that was better than Taco Bell on the taste/price/convenience dimension but also healthier, well that would be an excellent thing for the world.
And maybe someone could do it. The world's purveyors of processed foods have noted a real market demand for healthier products. Consequently, they're poured a lot of time and energy into creating things that at least seem healthier. And so we really have a lot of healthy-seeming options. But they've never, as best I can tell, poured all that much effort into trying to create things that are actually healthier. But someone could. Jamie Oliver could do it. Mark Bittman could do it. Michael Pollan could do it. And it would be more likely to succeed than an endless procession of NYT Magazine articles hectoring people about how they should cook more.
There are very good reasons why fast-food exists. It's not just that cooking--as a general process--takes time. Regular cooking is a lifestyle that actually requires a shift in how you think about the world. This is especially hard when you're starting out. You have to stock your kitchen, and then you have to get in the habit of making sure those stocks are kept up. You have to figure out a regular rotation of meals that meet your families needs, and then you have to carve out a schedule that allows you to meet those needs. It seems rather perverse to say, "I won't be able to watch my kid's soccer practice because I have to finish brining the turkey."
I also agree with Matt's general annoyance with writers who can't seem to understand why a sane person would eat McDonald's. I don't eat fast-food, but I'm not much for inveighing against it. That said, without any stats to back me up, I think Matt is actually wrong about the relative health of food you cook yourself vs. Taco Bell. It's not because a meal from Taco Bell will necessarily have more calories "home-cooking." In fact, it's not about the calories at all.
My family, like most families, generally lives on the go, and we rarely get to have a decent breakfast in the morning. So most weekends I make twelve muffins (a different flavor each week) as breakfast for the week. I'm sure that someone, somewhere is scolding me for feeding my kid a muffin for breakfast. But here's what I know. When you make Mocha Chip Muffins, as I did this weekend, and see the ingredients going in--the copious amounts of butter, dairy and sugar--it makes you think long and hard about what you're eating, and what you should eat the rest of the day. It's one thing to know that a muffin is fatty. It's another thing to actually add the fat in yourself. Moreover, it's another thing to see the size of your muffins, and then see the gargantuan muffins that are sold in the stores.
Cooking--and really cooking from scratch--creates a consciousness about food. It creates a respect, an understanding of what, exactly, you're putting in your body. It's not that cooking is magically healthier. I'm not convinced that, say, my fried chicken has less calories than KFCs. But that isn't the point. The point is doing the actual work of frying a great chicken. It's actually having to see all the oil and eggs (depending on your recipe) used in the process. For me at least, doing that, has made it unlikely that I'll fry chicken every day, or even every week.
I don't suggest this as a kind of society-wide solution. I begin with how I started--there are very good reasons why people eat fast-food. I am privileged. I work a job that gives me control over my hours and thus permits me to cook whenever it's best for me. My spouse is a student, and has some control over her schedule enabling her to make the muffins if I'm tied up. I don't think writers should be dismissive about how we work and live.
But that said, writers should challenge us on how we work and live. I don't think it's frivolous to ask if we're undervaluing food consciousness. I think about it all the time, mostly in light of my own imperfections. I keep saying there's something wrong with me being a carnivore and still being squeamish about seeing an actual animal butchered. That's the next battle. We're all works in progress.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Dude's being purposely dense on this. One key about home cooking is that the portions per person are usually a lot less compared to eating out especially if you're eating at a fast food joint.
I'll second that. I spent a year working in Japan, and got in the best shape in my life. And it wasn't that I stopped eating "bad" things (the Japanese loved fried chicken, and I could buy it on the way home from the train on sticks) but the general portion size there was much, smaller. I remember being shocked when I came back home. But then it didn't take long for me to adjust back.
But this post touches on some key points, and it ties into some of the issues urban farming initiatives and others are trying to raise. The sense of where things come from is harder and harder to see in our world. I was raised in the suburbs, and when I think of all the meat I've eaten (and I still do) how many times did I know the farm it came from? How many times did I know the animal? (none) If you ask children where meat comes from they'll say the supermarket, and think of those plastic-wrapped packages, all looking the same. How many of us make the connection to that to the animals we see on the farm? It's as though the idea of death has become a bugaboo that we try to keep as far from minds (and plates) as we can, but it's a practice that keeps us ignorant, to our detriment.
I'm not saying fast food portions aren't big, but I know a lot of the time home portions can be pretty big. Make up a giant pot of pasta and sauce, or curry and rice, and it is really easy to wind up with what could be left-overs if you wait until the next day to eat them. Likewise, if you cook up two burgers at home and eat with chips, I'm not convinced that that is fewer calories than if you had two burgers from random burger joint. I wouldn't be shocked either way the math came out. Fries probably torpedo the whole equation, but TNC has a point. When you make stuff at home, even if the stuff itself is functionally the same, you have a better context to put it in when you make your over-the-day-over-the-week food choices.
This has very much been my experience, too. Cooking for myself also has the benefit that it tastes really fucking good.
I'm not a dense enough yuppie to say "cook for yourself or you're a bad person." But there really are benefits to mental, physical, and financial health (I don't have a lot of money so if I want, say, carbonara, I'd better make it myself.) It's not a cure-all but it's a good use of your leisure time.
Another big point is food technology. We have square watermelons but aren't as advanced as people think. Salt and fat continue to play a big role in prolonging shelf lives, helping pre-prepared and partially prepared foods to make the trip. So there's even going to be a difference between fast food (which, let's face it, is analogous to Legos re: preparation) and the exact same food made from scratch or closer to scratch. You don't have to be some sort of organic nut about it, but home assembly of recipes is going to generally be better than store bought or fast food.
Fat tastes good. It doesn't even need to be that much. I can't watch my wife cook, because I'm always shocked at how much butter or olive oil she uses, but she really doesn't use that much. Knowing too much about what you eat gives you a complex -- just as knowing too little is associated with eating crap. There has to be a balance.
I'm going to quibble with Matt about the ease with which Bittman or Pollan could create a processed foodstuff that would be healthy. I've read quite a bit of Bittman and some Pollan, and their whole point is that a product that can survive for months on the shelf is not going to qualify. Oatmeal made from the slowcooking oats with fresh fruit and a little maple syrup or brown sugar added at the end of cooking tastes very, very different from anything in a packet mixed with boiling water.* There's a whole science to making processed food appealing that the food companies have perfected, and petulantly asking why Pollan doesn't just create an oatmeal bar that tastes fresh and delicious and has noticeable fiber and magically is both soft and crunchy--you can't do simultaneously soft and crunchy in a packet that sits for months. Physically it is not possible.
*Per the Why Would Anyone Eat McDonald's point, I need to note that my children vastly prefer Quaker instant, especially with dinosaurs, to Mom and Dad's steelcut oats with maple and walnuts.
There's a whole science to making processed food appealing that the food companies have perfected, and petulantly asking why Pollan doesn't just create an oatmeal bar that tastes fresh and delicious and has noticeable fiber and magically is both soft and crunchy--you can't do simultaneously soft and crunchy in a packet that sits for months. Physically it is not possible
I don't know if it is possible, but even if it was, I'm sure that people like Bittman or Pollan wouldn't want to eat it -- they would insist the hand-made fresh product is better even if thousands of blind-taste tests had shown people couldn't tell the difference. There is always an element of pure snobbery in foodism.
And there is also a strong element of ideology. Pollan believes people should spend time preparing their food -- he would be against fast food even if it was healthy and environmentally friendly.
Really? How do you know that? Have either of them said that?
Ok, yes, I'm making stuff up. And I really shouldn't have said anything about Bittman, since I don't even know who he is.
But I have read a few books by Michael Pollan, and I think it is fair to say that it not just about health or the environment for him. Spending time preparing one's food is an intrinsic good to him.
Gotcha. I liked The Omnivore's Dilemma, but yeah, not exactly practical.
The moisture from the soft parts will make the crunchy bits mushy. So even if you start out with a soft oat bar with crunchy nut topping, within a week you will have a harder, staler oat bar with mushier nut topping--it's basic science.
They would insist the hand-made fresh product is better even if thousands of blind-taste tests had shown people couldn't tell the difference.
If you can't point to these taste tests then this is just a big strawman--pointing out that freshly made food tastes better than processed stuff that's been on the shelf for 8 months is a truism because it matches people's experience.
And I get that people can find Pollan wearing, but his basic tenets, such as "You should eat real food, not too much" gets met with such extremes of "Well that's totally unfair and ridiculous and a standard that no working parent ever achieved and in the history of the world..." I mean, in the history of the world pre-packaged processed food wasn't an option until recently.
Well, as I acknowledged above, I was making stuff up.
Actually, my guess would be that people can tell the difference, and most of them would choose the processed stuff.
I'll grant I've often had this thought about instant coffee--clearly people found something about grinding their own beans wearing and preferred the instant. It's not like they said "Eww, disgusting, tastes awful, where can I buy some?"
Well, I think his argument is that fast food is intrinsically not healthy or environmentally friendly. Maybe he wouldn't say that it's impossible to make fast food that is either, but that the tendencies of the industry push hard in the other direction.
"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams, a vegetarian, actually tried creating a healthy processed foodstuff a few years ago. I think it was called the Dilberito or something like that. It was supposed to be a healthy alternative for people who spend long days doing computer programming, etc. I was excited by the idea, but the execution -- meh. The combination of spices was just not good. In terms of relatively healthy fast food, the microwavable Amy's Kitchen entrees are pretty decent, though probably higher in fat & salt than Pollan would prefer.
Pop quiz: If you made the most lavish, wonderful burger you could think of, and served it with french fries, how many calories and fat could you cram into it?
The answer if you're eating a Chili's the Jalapeno Smokehouse Bacon Burger (with fries): 2120 calories, 146g of fat.
That is a day's worth of calories in one sitting and TWO day's worth of fat (and a little off the third day). It also doesn't include any calories from your drink (drinking non-diet pop? Add at least another 100 calories for every fill-up).
I don't know a single person who cooks like this at home, even for special occasions.
I also don't think anyone orders a Bacon Burger with French Fries without knowing that s/he is splurging, calorie and fat-wise, but I doubt most people realize exactly how bad it is, precisely because no one cooks like this in real life in a real kitchen.
Before I started keeping track, I had no idea what foods had what calories--I didn't look and the info wasn't being pushed by the restaurants at the very least. So simply finding out how many calories something had was an eye-opener.
But then I started seeing the context. See, even knowing the numbers in the first case didn't matter because I didn't have a sense of scale--500 to 600 calories didn't sound outrageous until I discovered that if I wanted to drop a pound and a half a week, I had to average 2100 calories a day. I was splurging without knowing I was--or rather, even when I suspected I was, I had no concept of just how badly I was doing it.
I'll tell you this much; I've cut down considerably on the amount of alcohol I drink, which might be the saddest cut of all.
The booze is a big point of compromise, this is why I knew a few drunkarexics in college, you don't eat much before going out that way you get way more shitfaced off of fewer drinks-great plan right?
TNC, you make great points. My wife and I cook basically all our meals (it comes from my wife being an especially picky eater). We don't go out of our way to eat especially "healthy" foods - our cakes and pies pretty much proving the point. I do make sure we have lots of fruits and veggies on hand (this has something to do with a lack of fresh produce in our past), but we don't necessarily hold to any diet, and meat, potatoes, oil, butter, carbs and all those "bad" things play prominent roles in most of our meals.
I get what you're saying about being closer to the ingredients in your food when you make it yourself. I am forever turned off to cheesecake after becoming an expert at making it, and having to dump container after container of cream cheese in with sugar to make the filling. However, I do think that there is another element that explains the advantages of cooking your own food as opposed to buying it in a fast-food version. You really feel the cost-benefit analysis when you have to make with your own hands what you eat. How badly do you really want that pie/burger/whatever? Sometimes it is simply too much effort.
With that said, I would disagree that there aren't more society-wide implications for this. Yes, many individuals in many households are simply working too hard to spend more hours at home cooking a meal. Privelige plays a part. And yes, you can't argue that you missed your kid's soccer game because you were brining a turkey. But isn't this a false choice? What about all those long hours that we Americans are spending watching tv? We can't really sacrifice - I'm going there - an hour of Mad Men or Housewives of New Jersey or whatever to spend an hour a night preparing a meal? And I would also say that we shouldn't equivocate too much home cooked meals with fast food. The trick is to get the family involved, so that no one is really eating a meal that meal that someone else prepared for them. It adds to the family time and cuts down on the prep time.
This is interesting. Gonna kick this up for a post in a bit. Hold your comments, guys.
Michael Pollan also makes this point when talking about cheap (unhealthy processed) foods v. expensive (healthy fresh or local). Although food costs are down to 10% of income compare to 20% fifty years ago, the idea that we can't afford healthy foods (which I realize isn't in the original post but I believe ties into ideas about class and privilege) is a bit of an aberration. Fifty years ago people didn't spend hundreds of dollars and cable and satellite packages and hundreds of dollars on cell phone packages, both of which are pretty much ubiquitous now, regardless of class. At the end of the day it's about priorities, whether they be time or money
Food costs may be down but isnt it generally recognized that real income for the middle class hasn't risen? If your rent, cost of education, cost of health care, cost of entertainment and communication has risen significantly but not your income you do have less money to buy good food.
Following on Kochevnik's and Allusionist's points, the Garbage Project in Arizona found that the least amount of wasted food came from poor hispanic neighborhoods. Which was not so much about carefully budgeting food dollars as it was cooking from a cuisine that used a few basic staples (beans, tortillas) in many different ways, so you didn't have the extra bit of beans and half a head of cilantro going bad and getting pitched.
My mother cooked all of our meals and I can remember how the extra rice became rice custard, the stale bread became bread pudding, too ripe bananas went into banana bread, and nothing was wasted. People do not even know how to do those things anymore.
My mother was actually a pretty good cook in that her food tasted good although her recipes were simple. I realize now how much I was influenced by her, but I've been able to take cooking to the next level because I'm more creative than she was. However, I certainly learned those lessons about waste.
I think you're right, but LCrawfty makes a good point. It can be tough to afford fresh, whole foods when housing and health care and education have all increased astronomically since, say, 1959.
But the biggest barrier, in my eyes, is affording the time. My wife and I cook everything for ourselves and just one 1-year-old, and it takes a LOT of time, mostly on weekends, because during the week we can't have the kid eating at 9. We both work. If we worked any longer hours, which many people, it would just be more of a squeeze.
In 1959, you could have a nice middle-class life on one salary. Now I'm not nostalgic for a time when women were forced to do unpaid domestic labor, but I'm thinking it really wouldn't be so bad if the cost of living allowed a family to live on one salary.
But whatever. Taco Bell is cheap, until it isn't. Not when you have a country full of people with ridiculous chronic health conditions tied to diet.
Everything gets paid for, one way or another. I'd rather pay for good food up front.
You're exactly right, Mr. Shrimp, fast food diets cost at the other end when people have diabetes and clogged arteries and other diet related health problems at younger ages. But Taco Bell doesn't pay for that, someone else does.
Just wanted to jump in with a couple points.
One, if someone doesn't have the time, or doesn't have the energy, then obviously yes, cooking all your own meals is going to be tough. But like with TNC's muffins, a potential antidote can be making a big batch of something and stretching it out over the week (as long as you don't mind the monotony).
Second, "Taco Bell is cheap, until it isn't...Everything gets paid for, one way or another." I think this is key, although I'm interpreting it slightly differently from Mr. Shrimp. You don't need to spend extra on organic this or that in order to make good home cooked meals: you'd be surprised how much you can find if you look. I can only speak to the Boston area, but the Market Basket chain provides fresh produce at very cheap prices. We're not talking Whole Foods premium organic quality or whatever, but it is fresher than your average store (the catch is that they often have variable stocks, you get whatever they have in). But in any case eating out or ordering take-out is cheaper in terms of time, but not necessarily in terms of cash. At my workplace I pretty much live on leftovers for lunch every day, while I see most co-workers spending at least $6 a pop for a cafeteria-made or food court bought lunch.
So I guess it really boils down to a time/energy commitment. It's no small undertaking, and defintitely takes planning. And, as Liza mentions, you have to get creative with leftovers.
@Kochevnik81:
"But like with TNC's muffins, a potential antidote can be making a big batch of something and stretching it out over the week (as long as you don't mind the monotony)."
Back when I cooked more, I would make more than one thing, or one thing one week and another the next -- and then freeze it. If you get so you're rotating through a few things, it's easy to get past the monotony.
On the other hand, you do have to find a way of keeping it edible for long enough, and maybe not everyone would be as happy about eating thawed food they'd cooked a few weeks ago. ;)
"Hold your comments, guys."
Sorry, I saw this after I'd replied.
"We can't really sacrifice - I'm going there - an hour of Mad Men or Housewives of New Jersey or whatever to spend an hour a night preparing a meal?"
No. That's unwind time, and I find it ultra-necessary. I'm guessing lots of other people do too. If I lose an hour to an hour and a half or more of unwind time a night, I wake up tired the next morning.
Not to mention that would be too late in the evening. You don't want to be feeding your kids at 8:30 or 9 pm. Much of the difficulty in getting home-cooked meals on the table has to do with getting them out there on time. Of course, one of the main reasons is this:
And yes, you can't argue that you missed your kid's soccer game because you were brining a turkey
Really? Do you remember your dad going to your baseball practices? I don't. Most kids' dads didn't even come to all the games. When did watching your kid stretch and do calisthenics become mandatory? Maybe we could carve out a little time by dropping that particular constraint.
Honest question, not to be flip: does your relaxation require you to sit still rather than stand at a prep table shelling peas or chopping or whatnot? Or would learning to turn ingredients into meals potentially meet your need to be entertained while unwinding from work?
(I say this as the cheap shot from someone whose wife is a former pro from the 'California cuisine' tradition, who made me remodel the place so she can provide 95% of our family's total calories from fresh ingredients many of which she grew. Yeah, I know I'm privileged.)
"does your relaxation require you to sit still rather than stand at a prep table shelling peas or chopping or whatnot?"
Generally, yes.
"Or would learning to turn ingredients into meals potentially meet your need to be entertained while unwinding from work?"
Generally, no.
There's something so American about this idea that if only someone would create a better product--something healthier and cheaper than Taco Bell--we could stop worrying about this "changing our habits" business.
I think this might be a good thread to point out that Sandra Lee of "semi-homeade" on the Food Network is the devil.
Some great points here. I don't know many people who make bacon-burgers regularly. Not that they shouldn't--that's a personal decision, but I just don't know many home cooks who do it.
Also really good point Deborah about preservation. I missed that.
I do make bacon burgers when my wife isn't home, and my kids and I love them. They are also only 500 calories.
This is the point, that fast food de-educates us about eating, and cooking at home educates us about eating. If we are to eat mindfully, it is more effort, and possibly more expense. When has anything worth doing ever been better at the lowest common denominator?
One of my pet peeves is people who eat meat regularly and are really squeamish about just dealing with raw meat at all, they don't want to touch it, they don't want to cut it up, they don't want to see other people handling it. Since first grade I was making meatballs at home so I had to get over that ew raw meat thing really fast. To me, its practically a maturity issue, if you want to be the kind of real person who can handle feeding themselves on a basic level, and meat and fish are a part of the diet you want, then you need to grow up and get your hands in some raw animal (wash first) and quit whining.
I hate dealing with cold meat like chicken breast as the cold gets right into my joints. I find my self constantly washing my hand with warm water to overcome the chill.
One reason home cooking is healthier is that the economies of scale of fast food don't matter to you.
Consider the tradeoff: grease vs elbow grease. If you are at the stove anyway, why not stir, flip, or otherwise mechanically prevent your food from burning? In a fast food joint, they will opt to use oil and have one fewer employee.
TNC is also right that seeing what you are doing is important. A resturaunt (fast or slow) will opt to make the food slightly better, since you won't know it's 10% more fat. You won't necessarily make the same tradeoff.
You're so right about how cooking for yourself makes you conscious of what's in your food. It also requires you to do some cost/benefit analysis when it comes to cooking time and cleanup, as well. I'm sure, for instance, that people would eat a whole lot less fried food if they had to fry it themselves. There's no worse kitchen cleanup than a grease-covered stove top and a pan full of used cooking oil.
As others have said, we like home-cooked meals because they taste better. I know we spend quite a bit more time shopping, planning, and cooking meals than some of our friends do, but I also think we get a great deal more enjoyment out of our food on a daily basis, too. Like almost everything in life, it's a trade off, and you make your choices according to what's important to you.
A lot of good thoughts here, and I want to second Deborah about preservation and health largely being mutually exclusive.
Another benefit of cooking at home is time. Without sounding too sentimental about this, eating at home and having a conversation with the family actually slows down the process of eating, which allows you to satiate your hunger as you consume food and calories. Eating in 5 minute increments doesn't allow you time to feel full, so you tend to consume more calories in a single sitting than if you were taking your time. This is even true at restaurants; think about the actual time you spending eating the food compared to waiting for it.
Additionally, fast food joints and restaurants are interested in the bottom. They have an incentive to serve more because they have to be one-size fits all. My wife and I don't eat the same amount of food (she's 120, I'm 200), but if we go to the same restaurant and order the same thing, we get the same size portions. It's cheaper for restaurants to offer larger portions to all people (which usually causes people to eat more than they need) than to risk losing customers who don't feel satisfied. If it's "I'm stuffed" (too much) v. "I'm still hungry" (too little), stuffed will win every time.
My healthiest eating was when I was in college and had access to our school's great cafeteria. Lots of healthy choices, lots of variety, and I could control my portions (I had a no-seconds rule, which I'm certain was key).
I cook for myself now, but I just don't feel like doing the hard work of coming up with variety. SO I wind up eating the exact same dinner, though "healthy", but the exact same thing for maybe 3 weeks or a month straight. Then I have a mini-internal rebellion and will eat crap, or eat too much of something that would have been fine in reasonable portion sizes, but is bad after the third helping.
I get what you're saying about understanding why you put the stuff into your body that you do, but alot of times for me I don't think it's even that cerebral - it's just a question of repition, effort, and convenience.
There just isn't any reason for eating fast food other than choice, unless you are a child and that is what your parents buy for you. I don't care how busy you are. What does it take to bake a few pieces of chicken or broil some fish, cut up a salad, and steam a vegetable? It takes very minimal cooking skills, very minimal shopping skills, very minimal time, and very minimal creativity and imagination. It isn't even what I would call cooking.
This is not really the best argument to people who don't already cook regularly. There's a big time savings in being familiar with the workings of the kitchen. I personally almost never cook for myself (live alone, usually out of the house for about 12 hours a day), and a big part of it for me is definitely my inefficiency in the kitchen. I'm the sort of guy for whom pasta (as in a box of pasta) is a 45 minute task. I don't leave the kitchen unattended, for fear of spills or worse. Preparation, eating, and cleanup is over an hour, easily.
This is not to defend my lifestyle - I don't even think I could argue it's not a maturity issue - so much as to say that it is daunting for a lot of people.
Jon, I have had to teach both of my husbands how to do what I call survival cooking which is basically what I described above. What is interesting is that both of them were able to make absolutely incredible salads and sandwiches. And both were actually very good about doing the grocery shopping once they learned to make a list of what they would need for the week. Neither one ever advanced to real cooking, but they both developed enough interest in their health and their diets to eat fairly healthy.
So, this is largely a matter of motivation. You can learn to do these things and do them efficiently without spending a great deal of time. And the health benefits will be immense.
I think you missed the bit in your own post about "I have had to teach". If a person is not married to you, it might not be convenient or even possible to acquire that knowledge. For someone who doesn't know how to do something, doing it is hard.
Jon, check out Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything: Quick Cooking which does the theme and variation thing--if you can scramble eggs, you can make 5 moderately different dishes based on that. You can cook a bowl's worth of dried pasta and mix it with tuna packed in oil and some lemon juice, or toss it with grated cheddar and butter. I like to cook, but most of my dinners are put together in under an hour while supervising homework.
I'd argue for some empathy. There obviously is a reason, there's a reason for everything. We might begin by asking people why as opposed to telling them we don't care.
Not only should I have empathy, but apparently I should be teaching these skills at the community college in one of those extension classes.
As an adult who was never taught to cook, I read this and think: What temperature do you bake/broil it? How long? Covered or uncovered? (And if I burn/otherwise ruin it, how much $$ has gone to waste and what will we eat then?) How long do you steam a veggie? And how do you do it without a steamer? What seems minimal and simple to you seems like a big, potentially expensive production to me; definitely worthwhile and something I would love to do....someday when I have time to take a cooking class or teach myself to cook, money to stock up on equipment, etc. For today -- I'll just stop on the way home from work and pick something up.
I think some have touched on this, but it's worth bringing it out more specifically: It's a different scale of economies when you are cooking at home for just yourself. If I buy a head of lettuce, I have to have several salads, or a couple really big salads, in order to get through it before it goes bad. Is that better/cheaper than getting a McSalad? Probably, but after a couple sad, brown, half-heads come out of my fridge, I feel more hesitant about buying a new one. Similar thing with sandwiches... if I cut up a tomato and get a leaf or two of lettuce out, it makes it way more appetizing, but it also seems barely worth it, and I'm more likely to end up with part of a dead tomato in another few days.
This isn't an insurmountable barrier, of course. A few years ago when I was a grad student and had some pretty specific dietary requirements, I would spend hours on weekends and some during the week making batches of things, splitting them into individual servings and freezing them. But it did take time and energy not just to cook but to plan, and when I became ill and didn't even have energy for the things I literally had to do, it wasn't sustainable.
I agree on the wasted food half-packages or heads, and I'm cooking for 4. (Albeit 2 of us don't want to eat leaves.)
For tomatoes I'd recommend small plum tomatoes which are a lot easier to use up before getting sad.
I'm sure you don't care (why should you) but that doesn't change anything for me, now does it? I travel 80% of the time, and work long and sometimes rather bizarre hours when visiting clients. Perhaps I should buy a motorhome with a galley kitchen and drive everywhere. Then I could "bake a few pieces of chicken or broil some fish". Or I could do like Denzel in the Hurricane movie and make grilled cheese in my hotel room with an iron and a paper bag ...
All of this navel-gazing (silly) and moralizing (disturbing) about food is a little over-the-top, don't you think? It's just food.
A note on "ethnic foods"-its become apparent to me that a lot of people seek out high calorie versions of Chinese, Mexican, and Thai foods because they just dont have the ingredients on hand or the skills to make it at home. Its intimidating to go out and try to purchase ingredients you`ve never heard of or used before. But keeping it simple, chili, garlic, and lime juice are extremely versatile and can add Asian or Latin flavors, to a number of different plainer foods. We're making progress slowly but I think in a few years many more people will be cooking their own "ethnic foods" at home instead of grabbing takeout.
My wife has celiac disease, so I've been on a gluten-free diet by proxy for about two years now. It is definitely an eye-opening experience when you're really forced to look at all of the ingredients in your food to make sure there's nothing there that will literally injure a loved one. Most of the gluten-free prepared foods are pretty expensive, so we've done quite a bit of research about preparing our own foods at home. It really is a lifestyle change, an attitude change, and an economic change.
The way I look at the whole debate is that, while the human body is really adaptable, we've been eating natural fats, fruits, vegetables, meat, and lower-gluten grains for hundreds of thousands of years. The body's had time to evolve to optimize digestion for all of that stuff. We've had wheat for about 10,000 years, corn for about 6000 years, MSG since 1909, and high fructose corn syrup since 1967. The body is incredibly adaptable, and it will work with what you give it. But people are fueling it with things that it really isn't adapted to burn.
You also need to start thinking about how food used to be seasonal and regional. My wife has a gluten sensitivity (not full-blown Celiac's, but she feels much better and is much healthier off wheat), and we've had to adjust to the same thing over the last four years. We've come to expect to be able to get any food anytime and anywhere. I live in South Carolina, and if you look at old cookbooks before modern agriculture, wheat flour was rarely included in recipes; it usually called for rice flour because that could be grown on the coast.
In terms of health any traditional diet--Mediterranean, Vietnamese, etc--will work, because people ate that for many many generations and lived. (Interesting detail on this--when some strict vegetarians left India for Britain they suffered deficiencies because their grain and legume stores had held a small amount of insect protein that was now absent and had to be supplemented. And I will exempt the traditional arctic circle diet because getting your vitamins from organ meat of top predators is not a good idea with so much more heavy metal in that food chain.)
The body is incredibly adaptable, and it will work with what you give it. But people are fueling it with things that it really isn't adapted to burn.
Soy protein powder. One thing I'll say for Pollan, I think he's dead right on the irrational American fondness for nutritionism.
I live near a Popeye's and four Peruvian grocery stores. I cook a fair bit but I find that when I don't, it's because I'd rather not clean up afterwards. One week, the thought of doing my dishes nauseated me to the point where I pretty much ate out every day but one. Those weeks are few and far between but they're there. I wonder if the reason why people with families end up eating at fast food restaurants is simply the clean up involved afterwards.
I'd argue that the biggest upside of cooking for yourself is the increase in your own creativity. Till I moved to a largely Andean neighborhood, I had no idea what to do with cassava and yellow chile paste. Till I moved to a Portuguese neighborhood, I don't think I used fish in the ways I ended up doing. The best part about cooking, at least for me, is how you feel obligated to yourself to give yourself variety and in that way, become more conscious of the things that are available around you.
Fast food restaurants typically add more fats/sugars/salts in items you never would at home. This is because their starting ingredients are generally a much poorer quality than what you buy at a grocery store so they have to make the flavor up somehow. Ground beef gets cheaper the more fat that's in it etc. Fast food restaurants deep fry more often than the home cook (deep frying is a pain for most people at home), and typically fry their burgers instead of grill or broil.
Cooking creates an awareness of what you're
I don't care how busy you are. What does it take to bake a few pieces of chicken or broil some fish, cut up a salad, and steam a vegetable?
Including clean-up it takes me around an hour to do all of that. I understand why people eat fast food, a 15 minute stop on the way home and clean-up is a snap. Cooking is work and at the end of the day you may not have the energy to put into it. I cook nearly all my meals, but I completely understand the appeal of fast food. When I do get it or something processed it requires far less energy than cooking myself.
Fancy restaurants do the "everything looks and tastes better with 1/4 cup of butter poured over it" thing.
I think you and Caleb have a point about the pain of clean up.
I'll be clear, I think restaurants as a whole add extra more fat/salt/sugar than you would cooking at home. Fancy restaurants can be just as guilty of this as fast food, but very few people can afford to eat at a fancy restaurant often so it's hard to claim that it's a cause of obesity.
Maybe some people like clean-up, but it sucks and I only cook and clean for two most of the time. When I cook and clean with company over for 5-6 it's a lot of work even for simple meals. It still only takes 15 minutes to grab fast food though and even eating at home clean-up consists of throwing the paper away.
clean-up.. this is a great point. i'm a bachelor and more often than not i'm so lazy about it that i'll choose something packaged (eating out is too expensive to do more often than lunchtime at work)
It's hard to make anything at home that's even remotely as bad for you as a commercial product that's not trying to be especially over-the-top.
Building on your idea of food consciousness, I think there's something to the idea that food has multiple purposes: in the short-term, food provides energy so we can go, go, go; in the long-term, food provides nutrients to provide a healthy body; psychologically, food provides comfort, excitement, and pleasure. I can only speak for myself, but I know that when I used to eat out all the time, I began to think of every meal mostly in terms of the pleasure it provided. Even if you get used to eating out, there's something almost luxurious about having someone else cook for you; they deal with the trash and the messiness. Aside from the ease of eating out, there's the pure pleasure of consumption. When you live in a city, food is everywhere (an irony that breaks my heart when I think of all the homeless in the city, as well). Walk down one street, and there's the smell of a cheesesteak, the sight of a big-mac on a bill-board, the sound of the guy next to you munching on potato chips... you can't just can't escape it. Food is literally sensual in this situation. I stopped thinking about food as a source of energy and nutrients. (The only benefit of being so busy that i had to eat out all the time was that I was running all over the place, and so I managed some exercise to balance the many lattes and bagels and soft pretzels I was eating on a regular basis!)
Even if you get used to eating out, there's something almost luxurious about having someone else cook for you; they deal with the trash and the messiness.
This. I really like to cook, but letting someone else deal with planning and prep and cleanup is a real pleasure on vacations, or the rare times we do eat out.
Zacly. We eat out less than twice a month, because as I explained to a NYer coming to visit my little cowtown recently, The best restaurant in town is in my house.
When we're on vacation we usually rent a place with a kitchen because that's part of my wife's joy in travel, shopping in a foreign language and figuring out new ingredients. Part of my vacation is working as the busser/dishroom/prep cook, most places we go.
At home, my family eats healthy, appropriately portioned meals from fresh ingredients partly because I'm an expert on finding the time to do cleanup between meeting my paying clients' expectations.
If I had another kind of job, we'd be regulars at Applebee's.
One thing that always bothers me (slightly) about these discussions is that everyone seems to focus on families and couples. What about those of us that are single? It's really hard to cook for yourself and realize any appreciable cost savings.
Well, I find it possible, but it involves a lot of repetition. I rarely make more than 2 different meals in one week- I cut recipes in half where possible and eat a lot of leftovers/reworks. I also am a "member" of an informal supper club- friends and I take turns hosting each other for dinner. It's a three-fer: good dinner, no leftovers(!), good company, but I rarely accomplish anything else that evening, and often get to bed past my bedtime. I think it's worth it, but others may not agree about the trade-off.
That's what the comment thread is for. Introduce that element. Talk about the challenges of single people. I can only speak on what I know. Family is where I'm at. But I welcome a broadening.
The biggest problem I have, as Gingergene alludes to, is reconciling variety with an economy of scale. Eating the same one or two dishes for a week straight is mind-numbingly boring, and furthermore there is a limited subset of dishes that make for good leftovers. So what ends up happening is that sometimes cooking for myself is expensive because of all of the things that I have to throw away, whereas eating out is the cheap option.
There's also the factor of all the...things that you need to cook at home - pots, pans, utensils, appliances, &c. Not only is it a huge expense to buy all of those things on your own, but also for someone who doesn't have a house and moves apartment relatively often it's important to keep my possessions to a minimum.
Finally, and perhaps this is a sad statement, but eating at home for a single person can be...lonely. Eating out, even if it's by myself, still affords me the (perhaps illusory) notion that I'm out interacting with people.
I just posted basically the same thing before I saw what you wrote. This is pretty much my experience too. There's nothing more annoying than buying veggies that you think you are going to eat, only to have to throw them out at the end of the week because you couldn't finish them by yourself.
Candace - I got a compost bin almost exactly for this purpose. At least now when I don't eat all the asparagus I think I will, it doesn't go straight to a landfill...
DS says> eating at home for a single person can be...lonely. Eating out, even if it's by myself, still affords me the (perhaps illusory) notion that I'm out interacting with people.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I've moved some of my "food" budget to my "mental health" budget for this very reason. I moved cross country and most of my "local" friends live an hour away in good traffic, two hours in bad. There's just no one to eat dinner with on a regular enough basis. So I go to places with dining counters or bars where I can watch "the bartender show" and have people to chat with. If I eat all my meals at home I go not-so-quietly insane.
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I actually learned how to cook. My mom is an excellent cook, but she likes cooking for 12, and even she balks at cooking for 1. How hard is it to broil a little fish? Well, first one has to buy fish. When you only shop every week or 3 because you just don't run out of food that fast, you either eat fish that night or freeze it. If you freeze it, you either have to thaw it in the morning (never think of it) or spend time thawing it later. Now it has become a long project. And I have to take the trash to the dumpster that night or I wake up to a stinky house. I've actually toured a slaughterhouse and still eat meat but given the time to prep, cleanup, and needing to be careful about when I consume it, I usually buy my meat out and cook mostly veggie at home with bits of frozen this and that and chunks of cooked chicken or meatballs for variety.
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I'm almost mid thirties, single (fine, except for the dinner thing), and I can bake you cookies that you will hide from your kids so you can have them all. I have gadets and I know how to use them. It's still I giant pain to cook and clean for 1 every day. I make nearly the same cucumber, tomato, 1/3 ear of corn sliced from the cob, chicken chunk, avocado salad about 3 nights a week and it still takes me 20 minutes to prepare fresh, doing most of my cleanup along the way. It doesn't last. And it's probably a little too much food, but it doesn't keep.
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There's the boredom factor, the loneliness factor, the portion factor, the fact that most recipes serve 4, and that after 9 hours a day at work, I just want some food, now. If I had someone at home cooking me dinner, I'm pretty sure I'd eat at home way more often. But there are times for fast food, times for slow food, times for local food, times for leftovers. Getting a moderate mix of everything is my goal. And finding someone to come over for dinner (but quite literally everyone I know in my age cohort now has small children and don't like taking them out on weeknights).
I'm definitely in the "never learned how to cook from my parents" as well as the "single" boat, so up until about a year ago I barely owned any pots. It's just not a priority for me.
I never learned how to steam a vegetable, or grill a piece of fish, or cook pasta or rice, or scramble an egg, or anything that people learned as the "basics." I had to figure it out on my own with the help of the internet, once I was well out of college. But even that was a pain. I still haven't figured out of the trick of how to keep my pantry stocked, or what to buy for the week or what to cook on Sunday that will work all week. I'm figuring it out, but in the beginning stages, it's a LOT of time, and a LOT of effort. I imagine that when I get married and have kids I will have to do better, but for now, it's just me. I can have a pb&j for dinner and be perfectly satiated. And it's way easier than the stress of burning 2 different quiches (which I've done,) over or under cooking chicken, or spending an hour and a half on a "20 minute" recipe that I end up not really liking.
Plus, it's kind of depressing. If a recipe serves 4 and it's only little ol' me in the house, it just reminds me that I'm here and single, by damn self, cooking for my lonesome every night. Frankly, it's not that fun.
That's why you store leftovers. Always make more than you need. That way, you're able to a) entertain unexpected guests and b) mixing two sorts of leftovers generally makes for a decent meal. I'm young, single (technically) but I live with roommates. I find it's more fun cooking in that position than when living with a girlfriend or wife or kids or what-have-you. With my exes, I generally had to account for their tastes and schedules and it felt much more of an obligation than it does now.
And really, it is cheaper. My grocery bill per week is approximately 45-60 dollars. If I were to eat out five days a week, forget seven, @ five bucks a pop per meal, that's over a 100 dollars.
Buy rice/pasta/noodles/bulgar wheat etc, spices, beans and pastes/bases in bulk. If you're lucky enough to live near a grocery store that also sells meat, buy enough for four days. You cook the first two days and then the third day, you mix the leftovers from the first two and do something else the fourth day. Buy before you run out. Motivation, at least for me, depends on my confidence in my ability to create variety. Leftover combos get me through the lean patches.
I agree with you since there are some efficiency gains per person in cooking for larger groups. Larger groups also allow for a division of labor so one person isn't stuck doing everything. It was my brother's chore to set the table. Everyone had to clear, rinse and put their own plates/cups/flatware into the dishwasher. It was my chore to clear the rest of the table and clear the dishwasher. If you're by yourself than all tasks need to be done.
Still, I was able to cook for myself far cheaper than eating out all the time. You do have to get used to little variety during the day to day during the week, but you can have week to week variety. I'd typically cook a big roast/chicken or something. Then I'd make it into various things throughout the week (burritos, sandwiches, salads), and since most of those various things required little cook time it wasn't so bad. The best part was that since I wasn't really cooking, there was little to clean except for the plate/cup/fork I used to eat it.
Many of the time saving strategies people are recommending for families work just as well for singles. Make a large meal (I would make a huge slow cooker meal on the weekend) and split it into multiple meal portions and freeze some. By rotating your frozen stock you keep variety in your weekly diet without spending every night cooking. Develop a few simple meals that rely on a few ingredients and spices. A staple for me rice and beans: sauté chopped onions and garlic in a sauce pan with olive oil, add a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of some sort of beans (chickpeas, pinto, black, whatever), add hot sauce, cumin, or Italian spices, etc. and serve over rice (get a rice cooker, mine was $5 at Goodwill). One batch makes two meals.
The hard part for me while single was the shopping. Many things come in portions that are hard for one person to use before they spoil or are just so large you don’t want to spend the money for the 90% you won’t use anytime soon. Packs of fresh herbs, bags of carrots or celery, loaves of bread, and cartons of milk are all things I had a hard time with. I would often end up buying a bag of carrots to supply the two carrots needed for one recipe and then have to base my meals for the rest of the week around the remaining carrots so they didn’t go bad.
One of my local grocery stores has a bulk foods section which is very helpful for supplying staples much cheaper than the packaged versions in the center aisles but also for allowing you to only buy the amount you actually need. Instead of an entire pound bag of slivered almonds you only have to buy the half a cup you actually need. Same with baker’s chocolate, dried fruit, grains, rice, spices, etc. Some grocery stores sell veggies as singles instead of in larger bags but you have to find out where they are and what stores have what portions in stock.
I think there is a numerical sweet spot for cooking. It is much easier with my boyfriend than it was without. There is someone to share the cooking and cleaning burden with, having a meal together improves the chances of us actually cooking, and I am less likely to have ingredients go bad or linger. I can imagine though that if we added children it would get harder. More people means the larger the meal has to be to provide leftovers and the more dishes there are to do. Older children could help with prep and cleanup but that leaves many years when they are too young to do much.
One of my local grocery stores has a bulk foods section which is very helpful for supplying staples much cheaper than the packaged versions in the center aisles but also for allowing you to only buy the amount you actually need.
I'd like to emphasize this, because it's a great idea for anyone. It's especially useful for spices since in bulk you can buy a decent amount for 25 cents (but you don't get a labeled jar, but those can be picked up for a dollar or so), instead of buying a $5 jar for one recipe. There's no reason I need to buy $5 of cream of tartar when I used a couple tsp of it every year. It really cuts down the cost of trying a new recipe since you don't need to buy 2-3 spices you've never used at $5 each.
Bulk foods are pretty cheap since you can buy the portion you want, and there's no packaging beyond a bag. I started to take to saving jars instead of tossing them and putting bulk foods in them. I typically buy pasta sauce so this is a regular thing for me anyways. I bought couscous in a jar one time, and then saw it afterwards in bulk. I now just refill that same jar for a fraction of the cost.
That's a really good point about the bulk foods section. I don't have a grocery store with one near my house, but it sounds like a good idea for me to seek one out.
Another "saving" strategy: wash produce in vinegar water. I've started doing this and my produce lasts up to 3 weeks. It might not have vitamins anymore, but it works great. When I bring it home from the store or farmer's market, I put 1 part white vinegar and 3 parts water in a bowl and swish all* my fruits and veggies through it, then rinse in clear water and drip or pat dry. It's amazing how long my produce lasts. I bought a 5 pound bag of oranges to make orange juice and got tired of that about 8 oranges from the end. They rinds are starting to dry, but they're still perfectly edible 2 months later.
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*all = except for a couple things. Mushrooms don't fare to well with this. For finer greens I usually go to a 1:6 or 1:10 or more solution so I don't burn them. Corn I just break or cut into thirds then boil as soon as it gets in the house to set the sugar (leave it to sit and it will turn starchy). Artichokes can be rinsed, but I also usually prep and cook them all at once as they're fine after microwaving or re-steaming.
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Other single person strategies: prep all your veggies for eating right away, if they require prep. If you leave them whole, it's too big a project and you usually waste them. Buy smaller portions when possible. Buy frozen veggies and bags of chopped, cooked meats. Then make a pasta/rice flavored side dish from a Lipton pouch (or season your own if you're a better or pickier cook) and toss in a handfull of your frozen veg halfway through, and top with a handful of frozen shredded cheese. (Shredded/crumbled cheese for this purpose keeps great in the freezer). This usually makes 1-2 servings. Use a mix of pre-packaged and handmade. It'll save time, money, food, and sanity.
It's been a while since that was me, but I bought a lot higher percentage of frozen vegetables and divided up the meat into single use portions.
Many times parts of dishes or entire dishes can be frozen.
Interleave dishes so that you don't eat the same thing to days in a row.
The microwave is your friend and larger portions of a single vegetables at a time.
Rice last forever and cooks up in small quantities. Potatoes are best purchased loose and not refrigerated or kept near onions.
This is a cultural thing too... I grew up in India and we cook, at home, everyday. Eating out was reserved for a celebration or some sort of special occasion. So everyday food was not very complex or gourmet but simple and healthy, an almost balanced meal. My generation mostly grew up healthy.
As far as I can tell, it is not as difficult as it seems, in the age of Google. You can get recipes, nutritional info, Alton Brown & Rachel Ray streamed to your computer... I think its a matter of being convinced it is worth a try. Or like a commentator said, if you have no choice in the matter you do it.
This is a really important part of it, I agree. I grew up here but I'm Indian and eating out was extremely rare. Part of it is also because my parents are old-fashioned and can hardly stand to eat food that isn't Indian. Cooking a fairly complex set of meals every single day is also such a central part of what's considered the traditional Indian woman's role that we, too, got a lot of variety and nutrition.
What about our government's food and farming policies? I do not suggest that they are responsible for all of our unhealthy or excessive eating in this country; we like packaged and fast foods and there is a degree of inherent unhealthiness in that. However, what about the policies direct government to use billions in taxpayer money to artificially lower the price and thus encourage overproduction of e.g. corn (and the proliferation of artificially cheap products for it to be used in, from high-fructose corn syrup to beef- and chicken-related products)? I'm not saying no agri-subsidies whatsoever, but if we re-think them and lower them, we can significantly affect the price structure of the food market, and that's obviously a primary factor in determining what people eat.
I think the reason people are unhealthy in this country in a unique way is because of the combination of inordinate sitting we do, despite how hard most Americans work, and the widespread availability of mountains of very cheap, very very rich food. The former seems like it's due to a complicated mix of things; this is a big country and people drive everywhere (helped by a relentless car industry, especially from the 50's onward, and urban/exurban planning & federal highway policies & Depression-era development projects that fostered all that as well), a car culture is kind of central to our culture as a whole, we have an advanced economy in which a lot of work is done more efficiently by a combination of machines and people sitting in chairs, etc. But the latter (lots of rich, cheap, *processed* chemical-ish food) has as much to do with federal farming policies, I think, as it has to do with consumerism/demand-making and pop culture.
Three reasons to cook from close-to-scratch:
* It's almost as good for the finances as a second job--and you can do it at home with the family. My grandmother and mother-in-law organized their lives to include it, and they're also the ones who had money in the bank to educate the next generation.
* It's healthier.
* It's craft-work. You're paying attention to your life and building a skill. That part is indulgence, pleasure, and privilege. But as such things go, it's a cost-shrinking, health-building, family-friendly form of delight.
Three reasons not to fuss much about other people's eating:
* You don't know what else they get done by not cooking.
* You don't know what other value that food adds to their lives.
* It's not your life or your family.
Three reasons other people's eating is political as well as private:
* Our government subsidizes sugar.
* Fast-food sells by pumping in the salt and fat.
* Grocery stores are organized to help one-year-olds find the candy and scream until someone buys it for them.
This comment thread is making me think I need to step up teaching my kids how to cook. They do a few things but not that much. No offense to anyone, but I know how hard it is to learn to cook later in life. My husband thinks of cooking (and grocery shopping) like it's a foreign language. He's made valiant attempts, but just hates doing it. So he does the clean up, and everyone's happy.
I've been watching what food I buy for the last few months. Luckily, my grocery store started stocking a lot of reasonably priced organic foods. So far, we like them.
I've also been experimenting with making my own stocks. They're not that hard. Mostly I boil a chicken carcass with carrots, onions, and celery. I have some recipes that call for boiling chicken for other things and I always save the stock. Then I make soup. Again, just use the stock, carrots, celery, chicken, pasta or rice and you've got soup. I've made cream soups by adding milk. There are tons of web sites that help. And no, not everything turns out perfectly, but you learn from your mistakes and you feel like you've really done something.
I agree that cooking takes great effort and time. Between the shopping, prepping and preparing the food, a small marathon has been run. With a high energy, controlling personality (and someone who has run multiple marathons!) I welcome the opportunity to provide nourishment and cook for my family.
It is so rewarding when we have accomplished a task that does take so much effort. It makes us more accountable for what we put into our mouths. I like having that control and I enjoy providing home made foods to my kids.
I take great pleasure choosing the right fruits, veggies, organic meats, poultry, fine cheese, and seafood. It is only the past few years that I have had this ambition. I feel so much more energized and fit, mentally and physically with this "homemade" lifestyle. The ambition to prepare and eat high energy, clean, healthy, yummy meals has turned in a passion. I launched my blog this summer:
www.familyfreshcooking.com
I am having a great time providing creative recipes, tips, tricks and techniques for getting delicious meals on the table. It is fun to be an inspiration to others! We all seek balance in our lives and preparing our own foods helps us recalibrate our balance each day.
I absolutely agree with your views on being more accountable to our intake when we see exactly what goes into our meals. We are less likely to overindulge when we go through the process of cooking. It becomes obvious why certain things taste so good and add inches to our waistlines!!!! I do think certain foods taste better when they are freshly prepared. Shipping and time lags compromises flavor. The more we can do at home the fresher and it will be and the more we will understand its nutritional content.
Even though we opt not to see it this way, most foods we prepare at home come from ingredients that have been processed and packaged in some way. Unless we live on a farm (and even if we live on a farm), we haven't milked the cows, grown the veggies, harvested the grains, killed the meat and fished for the seafood. The best we can do is source our foods from the highest quality places we can access and afford.
This family will stick with home made foods. We will continue to NOT support the quick and easy, money hungry, flavor lacking, fast food joints!
-marla
www.familyfreshcooking.com
This reminds me of a vegan friend. He cared about animals, yes, but once when I asked him why he went vegan he told me it was in order to think about his food. He found that he had a tendency to put things in his mouth completely mindlessly, and that led to a tendency to tubbiness. Being vegan gave him a rule that he had to think about what he put in his mouth- only to check whether it was vegan or not- but that checking helped him remember sometimes to think about whether he was really hungry or what he wanted to eat.
I've never been able to stick to diets but the times I've done well, in terms of my diet, were when I was trying- just mildly- but trying- to eat more vegetables, or less fat, or less unsustainably caught fish, or whatever. It introduces an element of limit in my choices; I want scallops, but I won't choose scallops, because I know how they're harvested. It pulls the "I want that" down from the top rung on the priority ladder- a good discipline all around.
Just a note regarding taste tests of processed foods...Forgive me if someone else mentioned this as I didn't read every single post.
Arguing for or against fresh cooked food by taste is never going to yield the most accurate results, because most, if not all, processed foods are created using artificial or "natural" flavoring. The natural flavors are developed using the same methods so there isn't much difference. These flavors are chemically designed to trigger certain taste receptors in the brain. Certainly most people would say that a home cooked meal tastes better, and I think naturally occuring chemicals are superior to man made ones, but there's also the emotional and psychological factors of eating affecting that perception.
In a blind taste test without context, the taste signals coming from the processed food are the same, if not more appealing. Since human beings have evolved to prefer sugar, salt and fat, when someone tries two items with the same flavor profile the less healthy option will almost always taste better at first. This is probably why Pepsi always beat Coke in blind taste tests despite the tasters professed preference for Coke.